Bad Glass Part 1

Bad Gla.s.s.

by Richard E. Gropp.

This is the photograph you know:.

The room is small and dark. The walls are industrial concrete, with no windows. It's someplace underground. A bas.e.m.e.nt, maybe. A subbas.e.m.e.nt. A sewer. There's a road flare burning on the far side of the room, a spark of violet-red light barely cutting through the darkness. It illuminates the water-stained walls but doesn't touch anything else.

A half dozen flashlight beams converge on a body in the middle of the floor.

It is a man dressed in military fatigues. He is stretched out on his back. His flashlight has tumbled from his hand, resting just beyond his flexed fingertips. The flashlight's narrow beam reveals a mop and pail set in the corner of the room.

The soldier's s.h.i.+rt has been torn open. There are bloodred trenches scoured across his flesh-gouge marks, the work of his own fingernails. And there, right in the middle of his chest, is an arm sprouting up from his breastbone. It's a thin white arm-sickly pale, like something that's never seen the sun-reaching up through a puckered, jellied wound, protruding all the way up to the bicep. It looks like the whole arm has been punched up through the man's body, slammed through from the floor at his back. But the wound is small-too small for such violence.

The arm is bent slightly at the elbow-a crooked tree sprouting up from the dead man's chest. The wrist does not hang limp. Instead, it is c.o.c.ked back, the gore-streaked fingers splayed with tension. Teardrops of blood hang from sharpened fingernails.

The soldier's head is tilted back as far as it will go, the tendons in his neck as taut as a hangman's rope. His expression is pure agony. His eyes are open, staring at the wall behind him.

The floor is solid concrete. The parts we can see are smooth and unblemished. And there is nothing-save that one horrifying limb-to suggest that there is anything beneath the room, anything except more concrete, earth, and rock.

It is insanity, printed and framed. Pure insanity.

This image was originally posted to a website, a community forum dedicated to Spokane. It got a lot of attention, and after two days of intense traffic, it was picked up by the AP. They ran a story on it. And from there the photograph spread like a virus, appearing in newspapers and magazines, popping up on television news broadcasts. It was used in TIME magazine, alongside other perplexing photos from the city. Newsweek ran an entire sidebar explaining how it had been faked, how it could not possibly be real.

Unfortunately, the photograph is real.

I should know. I took the d.a.m.n thing.

And I've got more. Countless inexplicable images, locked up on my hard drive-the dark heart of the city, encoded in 32-bit RGB color. Compared with some of those, this image looks downright tame.

And they're all real.

Everything you've heard about the city, all the rumors, all the stories ... it's all true. And you're not even getting the worst of it.

I shouldn't have come here.

Photograph. October 17, 01:53 P.M. Entering the city:.

A road. There's an overgrown field at its side, littered with autumn leaves. The quality of the light suggests midafternoon, with dark, threatening clouds visible in the distance.

There's a standard street sign in the background, set in the top quarter of the vertical frame. It's a simple green-and-white sign, similar to countless others dotting the streets of America: ENTERING SPOKANE. Except now the city's name has been painted over with black enamel. Rivulets of spray paint have dripped down, drawing lines across the reflective green surface. The city's name is gone. Spokane-the word, the place-no longer exists.

In the foreground-frame left-stands a soldier in camouflage fatigues. The greens and browns of his s.h.i.+rt and helmet are muted by dust and road grime. There's a pack of cigarettes tucked away in his breast pocket. He's holding his right hand out toward the camera, blocking the view of his face. Instead of eyes and nose and mouth, we see only the clean white flesh of his palm.

An a.s.sault rifle is strapped across the soldier's chest.

There's a pink bunny sticker visible on the gun's b.u.t.t.

Getting into the city was easy. Surprisingly easy.

Ostensibly, the whole perimeter is under military lockdown. There are huge, well-manned checkpoints on I-90, blocking entrance to the east and west, right at the Spokane County border. There, I-90 becomes a forty-mile stretch of dead highway, a severed artery in the heart of America, blocking traffic on the Was.h.i.+ngton State side of the Was.h.i.+ngton-Idaho border.

I first tried the direct approach, driving east from Seattle.

There was very little to catch my eye between Seattle and Spokane: Snoqualmie Pa.s.s, still dressed in autumnal browns; the Columbia River, seated in its vast, water-etched gorge. But most of eastern Was.h.i.+ngton was pure boredom. Nothing but dead gra.s.s and industrialized agriculture, stretching on for miles and miles and miles.

Traffic began to thin as I hit the middle of the state. Most of the remaining vehicles were military vehicles. I watched long convoys of Jeeps, transports, and drab-green tractor-trailers shooting west, back toward Seattle. They had I-90 pretty much to themselves and didn't seem too concerned about the posted speed limits. Once, about fifty miles shy of the city, an open-backed transport pa.s.sed, heading in my direction. It swerved around my car, easily hitting 110 mph in the far left lane, and suddenly I found a dozen helmeted soldiers staring back at me over the waist-high tailgate. They all had bored, empty expressions on their faces. What did they know about their destination, I wondered, about the place looming up ahead? Were they privy to government secrets, to the things we mere civilians couldn't possibly know? Or were they, too, wandering around in the dark? I guessed the latter.

As I watched, one of the soldiers sparked a match and lit a cigarette. He protected the flame with his cupped hands and nodded the cigarette forward with his mouth, like a bird grabbing for a worm. I briefly considered trying to get some pictures of the transport-wondering how difficult it would be to dig out my camera while simultaneously flooring the accelerator-but the soldier with the cigarette lifted his head and saw me watching. A scowl spread across his face, and he flicked his match my way, bouncing it off the middle of my winds.h.i.+eld. I let the truck go.

About a mile from the military barricade, I pulled to the side of the road and got out my telephoto lens. I sat on the hood of the car and counted soldiers through the long gla.s.s, steadying the heavy camera on my steepled knee. When the count hit thirty, I got back into the driver's seat, returned the camera to my bag, and pulled out a map. There was a whole web of smaller roads sprouting out from the city. I figured not all of them would be this well guarded.

I started the car, crossed the median, and headed back west.

I was starting to get nervous. Until now, I'd had a precise plan, a course of action I could follow step by step by step. I'd spent the last couple of days crossing items off a list: I cashed my father's final tuition check; I went shopping for supplies-photography gear, food, clothing; I packed up my tiny dorm room. For G.o.d's sake, I had a f.u.c.king TripTik! An honest-to-G.o.d, Triple A-endorsed map pack, showing my course highlighted in bright neon yellow. I didn't really need the d.a.m.ned thing-nothing could be simpler (California to Seattle via I-5, then Seattle to Spokane via I-90)-but there it was, sitting on my pa.s.senger seat. A course. A plan.

Now that I was off the TripTik, things had changed. Suddenly-uncertainty. I found myself grinding my teeth, and my knuckles had turned into tiny bone-white mountains, tensed atop the steering wheel.

I took the first exit and started wending my way north, sticking to the largest roads I could find. There was no life here, off the highway, nothing but shuttered strip malls and empty parking lots. By all accounts, the phenomena afflicting the city didn't stretch out this far, but that hadn't stopped people from fleeing, leaving behind this ... this empty borderland. It was eerie. Nothing but convenience stores and gas stations. Abandoned and silent.

After a couple of minutes, the strip malls gave way to cookiecutter developments and middle-cla.s.s suburban housing. A few chimneys billowed smoke, but most of the houses looked empty, and there were very few cars parked out on the streets. I pa.s.sed a woman walking a black-and-white collie. They both stopped in their tracks and stared after me, their expressions nearly identical: wide-eyed curiosity mixed with fear.

I wondered how much looting there was out here now, how much home invasion. Not much, I guessed. It seemed like people just wanted to stay the f.u.c.k away from this place. And I was guessing that that included criminals.

I pa.s.sed through the last of the housing developments and veered east, entering a small patch of well-maintained woodland. A park. The road dipped and angled back up north, finally terminating at the lip of a valley.

I stopped in the middle of the street and studied the map for a minute. The Spokane River was somewhere down below, flowing by at the bottom of this little gorge. I craned my neck and tried to catch sight of the city to the east, but it was blocked from view.

I turned my car in that direction.

I ran into a barricade at the mouth of Fort Wright Road. There were just two soldiers at this one, guarding a line of orange-and-white barrels, the sand-weighted kind that you see at the side of highway off-ramps. When I first rounded the corner, the soldiers were lost in private conversation. One was standing with his arms crossed while the other gestured wildly, drawing grand figures in the air. They both had rifles slung across their backs.

They weren't exactly vigilant. It took them a moment before they saw me coming. And when they finally did, they lazily motioned me forward.

I pulled up to the orange-and-white blockade, and one of the soldiers-the one with the active hands-stepped forward and made a gesture, motioning for me to get out of the car. "Step clear of the vehicle, please," he said. He added the "please" with a smile, and that took me off guard. I'd run through the border scenario countless times during my drive up from California, trying to figure out any angle that would get me through the military gauntlet and into the city. Not once had I considered the possibility of a simple, polite conversation.

I got out of the car and shut the door behind me. I glanced up at the barricade and saw the other soldier watching us carefully. He hadn't moved from his position in the middle of the road, but he had swung his gun forward.

"Let's see some ID," my soldier said.

I got the wallet from my back pocket and slipped my driver's license free. I held it out to the soldier, noticing a slight tremor in my hand. My nerves are usually pretty good. But then again, I'm not usually trying to sneak my way into quarantined cities.

The soldier moved forward, plucked the license from my hand, and took a quick step back.

"Dean Walker," he said, reading my name off the card. He flipped the license over and glanced at its back. I don't know what he was expecting to see there. Maybe a bribe taped to the back. He glanced up at me, smiled, and nodded.

He flipped my license to the soldier at the barricade, sending it flying in a neat arc. The soldier fumbled with his gun for a moment before managing to get his hand up in time to catch the license. He studied it briefly, then picked up a two-way radio and began murmuring into its mouthpiece.

"What are you doing here, Mr. Walker?" my soldier asked. "Do you have business inside? Official business?"

"My brother ..." I said, pausing to clear my throat. I let the anxiety into my voice, hoping it would add weight to my lie. "My family thought he got out with the evacuation. We thought he was at his mother-in-law's house in Idaho, and I guess they thought he was with us in Seattle. We ... we don't talk too much."

The soldier held up his hand, stopping me before I could go on. "What's your brother's name?"

"Randy."

The soldier turned back toward his comrade. "Check on a Randy, too. Or a Randolph. Same last name." The other soldier let out a brief grunt and returned to the radio.

"I need to get in there," I said, nodding toward the city. "I need to find him and his wife."

The soldier shook his head. His smile was gone, and that completely transformed his face, aging him before my eyes. I'd originally placed him in his mid to late twenties, but now, with the smile gone, he looked at least ten years older. His eyes were ice blue, and perhaps a bit too wide.

"That's not going to happen," he said. "We're checking our records right now. If we ran into your brother in the quarantine zone, his name will be on the list." He tapped at the side of his nose; if this was some kind of signal, I didn't catch its meaning. "And now your name will be there, too, if it's not already. And if it is, if you're trafficking in and out ..." The soldier shrugged, letting me fill in the consequences.

"I just want to get in," I said. "I'm not going to do anything-"

He held up his hand and shook his head, his lips set in a pained grimace. "No," he said, lowering his voice, "you don't want in. You just don't know any better. Trust me. There's nothing in there you want to see. Nothing healthy. And if your brother's in there ..." Another shrug.

I studied the soldier for a long, silent moment, all of my plans, all of my lies-my nonexistent brother-stopped short by the pain in his voice. "What is it?" I asked, my voice a faint whisper. "What's in there? They aren't telling us anything."

The soldier glanced back toward the barricade; his partner was still on the radio, lost in his own conversation. "I spent some time in city center while the military was setting up infrastructure. They had us guarding the government buildings and patrolling the streets, not even doing house-to-house searches-I don't think anyone's doing house-to-house, not anymore." He paused. There was a brief tremor across his forehead, his muscles convulsing. "That place ... it does things to you. No explanation. It just happens. There were twenty people in my National Guard unit. Three disappeared, one killed herself, and one gouged out his own eyes-he just didn't want to see anymore. The poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. When I was transferred out ..." He shook his head and managed a brief smile. "I think that's one of the best things that's ever happened to me, right up there with the birth of my baby girl. Now, out here, I get to sleep at the base, thirty miles away. And I don't ... I don't hear things-"

"He's clean," the soldier at the barricade called. "No Dean Walker. No Randy Walker." He approached, cautiously, and handed me my license. Then he once again retreated.

"Sorry, kid," my soldier said, taking a quick step back. He cleared his throat, trying to regain his composure. "I'm sorry about your brother. If he's still in there, he's probably okay. There are quite a few civilians, and most of them ... most of them are managing."

I stayed silent for a moment, not sure how to proceed. The city had done something to this soldier, something powerful and terrifying. But what? And did I really want to know?

Yes. G.o.d, yes. But more than that, more than knowing, it was something I wanted to capture. That phenomenon. Whatever was going on inside the city, I wanted to distill it down to its essence; I wanted to condense it into a series of perfect images-perfectly framed, perfectly amazing images.

The city had changed this soldier in a deep and profound way. And that was the type of power I wanted. I wanted people to look at my photography, and, looking, I wanted them to change. Forever.

And I needed that to happen fast.

After all, how much more time did I have? I was a college dropout, a former fifth-year senior living on the last of my father's tuition checks, his accounting job waiting for me down in California, looming over my head like the blade of a guillotine. That is, if he hasn't already disowned me, I thought. And then what? Fast-food jobs? Scrambling to survive? No time for art?

"Please," I said. "I need to get in there ... Maybe money? If I paid ...?" As soon as I opened my wallet, the soldier stepped forward and pushed it back against my chest.

"f.u.c.k, no! Are you crazy?" He lowered his voice and moved even closer, until we were just inches apart. "See the poles at the side of the road?" He gestured with an angry stab of his head. "See what's on top?"

I peered up into the gray sky, noticing for the first time the freshly driven telephone poles standing on either side of the barricade.

"Cameras," I replied, feeling my knees weaken.

"The roads are under surveillance. We can't let anyone in ... They'd see."

The soldier stared at me for a long moment, his deep blue eyes grabbing hold of my muddy brown ones. Then something happened to his face-a crumpling inward-and the sorrow returned, replacing that momentary burst of anger. "You need to get in there, don't you? Your brother? Is that it?"

I nodded.

We stood that way for a couple of seconds, the soldier studying my face, trying to gauge my intentions. Then he looked away. "The cameras have a limited range, extending maybe twenty feet into that field over there." He nodded toward the south side of the road. "Bobby and I ... well, we tend to get distracted."

I nodded my understanding, and he pointed me back toward the car.

I started to get in but stopped as soon as I noticed the backpack on the pa.s.senger seat. I could see my camera sheathed neatly within. I glanced up through the winds.h.i.+eld and, for the first time, noticed the sign on Fort Wright Road: ENTERING SPOKANE. But the word Spokane was gone, hidden beneath midnight-black enamel.

"Wait!" I called. The soldier had already started back toward his comrade, and there was a blank, drained look on his face when he turned back my way. I reached over to the pa.s.senger seat and pulled out my camera, holding it up so he could see. "I don't suppose I could get your picture?"

For a moment, the soldier looked confused. He glanced up toward the surveillance cameras, then back down, shaking his head in amazement.

Then, slowly, that out-of-place grin reappeared.

He was a pretty good subject.

At first, he just gave me that s.h.i.+t-eating grin-wearing it like a protective mask-and that just wouldn't work. He was standing on the edge of something dark and unknowable, not posing with his family on a holiday weekend.