“The what?!” Steve asked again. This time Muleman didn’t answer. He was too busy reaching down inside the chicken enclosure, stroking the brown head of what once had been part of a beast capable of swallowing a goat whole. This was not hyperbole, this was fact, and was at least part of the reason the goats could be so hard to catch sometimes. The problem with goats, through human history, has never been that they’re stupid.
“Who’s a cute little chicken,” Muleman asked, most definitely not to Steve.
“You said a rocket launcher.”
“Yes I did,” said Muleman, in the same tone he’d been using before. “Because it’s what was there.”
“Why in the hell do you have a rocket launcher?”
“Somebody needs to watch their language around the chickie-poos, don’t they?” Muleman asked the chicken, who was currently nuzzling his finger without even the slightest hint towards nipping it.
“That animal,” Steve said, “Has been part of a collective that has seen and done more vile things than I think the entire human population as currently constituted will from here on out in its collective life. It seems like, if for no other reason than cosmic fairness or even just repaying me for all the meat it’s eaten, it can handle some language: now why in the shitting hell do you just have a rocket launcher in your cart?” Muleman stood.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“It’s an insane thing to have.”
“So are, in order, a cow with two heads, a chicken beast made of a hundred and fifty four individual component chickens, a single residential house with a militia waiting to storm it, and a world devoid of hope. Which of those things do we want to pretend didn’t happen while you question my rocket launcher?” Steve rocked back on his heels, lost for words. “And I have to tell you, I have yet to meet the person who didn’t find it fair value for whatever I asked to trade it for.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Of course. I’m a businessman.”
“What about the boots and the canteen?”
“You expect me to wander around without supplies? And what are they in exchange for something like a hard hat shaped like a Stetson?”
“What about the box of crap I picked through?”
“What d’you want me to say? Yep, I trade, nope with nothin’?”
“What about their rocket launcher?”
“Yep,” Muleman nodded. “It’s a nice one. I tell you, I’d love to have it. That one I’m not sure they’d see fair value for when trading for mine. They might not know the difference.” He turned and looked at what had once been a resplendent tree line. “Then again, they probably do. Anyway it’s a mob. If they knew I had one I’d be a threat, rather than a novelty. We’re all lucky they had theirs out when I drove up. Listen, Steve,” he said, cutting himself off. “There’s a lot about this situation- mine, yours, and on into infinity- that we can cover at some future point, sitting around the hearth with a few glasses of something adult. But what’s important right now, what matters in an on-the-ground sense, is what you’re going to do.” He turned back to the chicken he was stroking. “Doesn’t it, Melinda? Yessss.” To Steve. “I named this one Melinda.” Steve gawped. He didn’t like how often that had been happening lately.
Steve’s world, suddenly and for the first time in a long time, didn’t make any sense. On a given day there might be some infinite number of paths to take but there were only a few realistic ones and they all essentially led in a circle back to where he was standing in the morning. Muleman’s presentation was a right angle to all that, something hard and jagged that would lead to Steve eventually saying things like ‘changed my life’ and ‘never been the same’ if he had any new kids or became some kind of mentor figure in his dotage. It was the kind of thing you had to consider properly, preferably over a sleepless night, with something in your hands and at a table covered with bills and regret. There was plenty of the latter but none of the rest could be obtained in the time he had. So he stood, in the mud, watching a mutant tickle a chicken, and considered his future as throughly as possible under the circumstances.
There was, of course, Sheila to consider. You lose your family to a mass event and it’s one thing. But they were on the other side of that now, had actually- in the end- gotten there together. It felt different. Then again Sheila was insane, a little, and was in the process of proving it. Steve, for all his own faults, considered himself to be as sane as one could be in the circumstances and had always been a little worried about what might happen when the rubber of Sheila’s remaining being hit the road of reality. Muleman’s offer and the mob at the base of the hill looked, to Steve, a lot like asphalt.
He thought about his boss, and about the mayor. They were out there, waiting for him to come say hello. He wondered whether Muleman’s travels took him through town. He doubted it, having been going there for decades, through all manner of population changes, and never having seen Muleman before. Would he be allowed to visit them? Some might call that an insane request, and lump him back in with Sheila, and he had to acknowledge that would be a fair reaction. But he still wanted to do it, and something about Muleman’s ownership of a second face made Steve question how many of his reactions to questions would be fair before they, too, started becoming insane. None of it was predictable with any confidence. It was all, he told himself, very abnormal, and he hated it.
We wonder at lifelines. First and foremost, how often are they? What constitutes one? Sure, it’s a shorthand but once upon a time- and in many contexts since- they represented a real, actual escape from a mortal scenario. But how often have you heard the phrase offered in that vein? We think it more likely that it came up much more often on trivia night when you didn’t know the answer to who slew the minotaur. And that’s fair. Society, for most, has ceased to be a mortal concern. For Steve, though, the waters are muddied, we think. He is, most assuredly, of the Theseus generation. Yet he is also, one must argue, a member within his own time of a group for whom society has become deadly again. For whom the phrase lifeline might mean a line towards life. And he has been offered one. But he did not ask for it, and that creates all sorts of ethical questions.
“I don’t know,” Steve said, watching Muleman reach toward another chicken with his other hand. The man had great balance. It made Steve wonder about the second face’s ears and whether or not Muleman had four ear canals growing in. Would that give one an advantage? He wasn’t sure how it worked. “I’m not sure I can just… leave.”
“You can,” Muleman said. “Not about ability,” he continued, his voice measured and adult. Somehow Steve found himself wishing he was getting this speech in the chicken voice. “But I have a feeling you won’t, which’d be understandable.” He made contact with chicken number two and his voice changed. “Isn’t that right, lil Shawna? This one,” he turned to Steve, “Is called Shawna.”
“Yeah, I’d gathered that.”
“Steve’s going to stay at home and get murdered, isn’t he Shawna?” The chicken cooed. “Yes he is!” Shawna nuzzled his hand, so similarly to the way Melinda had that Steve was forced for a second to wonder if maybe their being melded together hadn’t left a mark when they’d been split. It was eerie, certainly, especially for Steve, who had Seen Things he wanted to Un See. Muleman stood. “Speaking of which,” he said, his voice back to normal, “We need to make sure we’re settled up, if that’s the case.” Steve shook his head, a little taken aback.
“Settle up?”
“Yep. As I said, I should be going soon. Whether you’re on the cart or not’s a detail. The main thread is me being gone, and for that to happen I need to pay you for these chickens.”
“Well,” Steve said, trying to recover himself and gather his sales feet. “How many…”
“I told you, you might as well sell me all of them.”
“But you don’t…”
“Tell you what: sell ‘em to me on credit. I’ll be back in the mornin’. If you’re still alive, you and me’ll go to my warehouse and I’ll let you take your pick. But you better make up your mind quick.” Muleman nodded over Steve’s shoulder. “Because the people at the bottom of the hill are about to get real antsy.”
Steve turned and saw Sheila, exiting the house armed to the teeth and sprayed with blood.
