The Body Collectors
The machine got all the credit, but the true genius of Agora was this: the logistics.
Jose rubbed the cold from his hands, cupping them and breathing hard into his palms. It smelled like cigarette smoke. I could really use another one. He thought, but they weren’t allowed on the job. He pulled the device from his pocket, tugging it roughly past the folds of the fabric. It was utilitarian, wrapped in thick industrial plastic with a cheap screen that didn’t work with gloves on. He dragged his finger heavily across it, scrolling to frame the building in front of him. West Village, Bank Street. He sat down and listened to the truck engine coughing. He coughed alongside of it, his clouded breath and the exhaust fumes intermingling like little storm clouds. The rear bumper felt cold against the small of his back. He sighed, looking outward, trying to put his mind as far from his grim task as he could manage while there was still time left for that. There was a quarter inch of snow on the ground. The city was quiet and dark. Street lights and windows glowed with eager anticipation. It should have been beautiful. His watch beeped. Midnight. Here we go.
He stared down at the monochrome outline of the houses before him, each labeled with a number. It was not their street number, it was the count of the bodies that would be expected inside. Jose waited, cold hands fingering a colder thermos, taking a sip of cheap coffee. Then, on the screen, lights flickered to life: green and amber and a few, distressingly, that were red. They looked like Christmas lights. They were the only festive seeming thing in sight, no one had bothered to decorate this year.
Two houses up from where they waited, the lights and number matched first: three. Three people for a house that big? Jose thought. He pressed two fingers against his lips and whistled loudly—a pitched shriek into the silent dark. His team turned to look, there were four of them on his truck: Manny, Mateo, Tito, and Tess. He pointed at the door, already on the move. Manny doused a poorly hidden cigarette against a streetlight. Jose glared at him. “What?” he asked. “It’s not like any of them are going to notice.” Jose held his glare. Manny held up both hands, “Alright, alright. I’m sorry.”
“It’s locked!” Tito said from the doorway.
“Already? you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Manny yelled back. “It’s not like they’re hard fucking rules.”
“Cállate,” Jose whispered, his frustration bringing out the Spanish he’d long been conditioned to hide in the hopes it might improve his station. Manny was right though, they were simple rules. Lights on, stove off, door unlocked. “There are still people who haven’t gone in. Do you really want their last memory of home to be your ugly bleating?” He shoved a bag into Manny’s hands. “Go pick the lock.”
Manny looked hurt. “I have a pretty voice . . .” he muttered quietly, “and I don’t think anyone wants to hear your stupid fucking whistle either. It’s like someone poured bleach down my ear canal every time. Every fucking time.”
In that moment he looked as young as he was. Weight and weariness—and an unfortunate choice to grow a mustache on a face poorly suited for one—had all aged his features prematurely. He was still just a boy. He’d been a burglar before Jose had hired him. He’d brought him in when he was freshly on parole. Prison had made an honest man out of him. Jose had kept him that way. He had learned how to recognize kids like these, to see the fear and the wounded hearts behind their brashness. He tried to get to them before the desperation set in— to give them a better path to walk than the one they had started down. Everyone on his crew was like that. It worked, most of the time.
The latches clicked and the deadbolt slid into place. Manny swung the door open, looking back at Jose with pride. Jose pointed toward the door and the rest of them went inside.
The gas lit fire roared in the fireplace. Bing Crosby crooned on their bluetooth speaker system. Betty straightened her favorite dress and looked around the house: at the way the light danced off the brick, at the curtains she’d loved that just never seemed to look exactly right next to the couch. Everything was perfect. She sat down next to her husband and patted the couch between them. West sat down where she’d suggested and she tousled his hair.
“Is it going to hurt?” He asked.
“No . . . No honey. Of course not,” she said, not knowing the answer. She took one last look at her family. Then she smiled, a brave wide-mouthed thing, with all the sadness forced out of it. She kissed her husband on the cheek and said goodbye to everything she had ever known.
All three were slumped over on the couch, leaning against each other, holding each other in a quiet half-goodbye. Two parents and their son: silver discs on their temples, placid smiles on their faces. They were so still that Jose, coming in behind the rest of his team, checked their dots to be sure they were still alive. All green. When he got closer he saw their arms twitching. He pushed two fingers against the boys eyelids, forcing them closed. He nodded to Manny and Tess, instructing them to do the same to the boy’s parents. Manny looked squeamish, but both did as they were instructed.
“I don’t understand why we gotta do that.” Manny said, keeping his voice low.
“Because if we don’t their eyes will dry out. And you don’t have to whisper, they can’t fucking hear you anymore.” Tess chimed in, fixing the mother’s dress, brushing her hair into a more manageable position, preparing her body.
“I fucking know that, Tess.” said Manny, a bit too loudly in retaliation, “I meant: why do we have to close them in the first place?”
“Because their brains are in the machine,” Jose said, “They don’t know to close them anymore. Let’s go. We don’t have time to waste.”
Tess tucked a hand under the mother’s shoulder and locked eyes with Manny. He looked nervous to be so near the woman’s breasts. Jose sighed, these kids were used to moving furniture. So was he. He’d seen Manny carry a two hundred pound refrigerator himself without breaking a sweat, but here he was stumbling over some wisp of a woman. They hoisted her up.
“Keep her upright.” Jose reminded them.
“Yeah we fucking know, Dad.”
They called him dad when they were annoyed with him. Tito and Mateo did the same with the father and Jose took the boy himself, hoisting him up by his armpits, his little feet swinging and kicking Jose’s knees. Bodies were hard to carry, especially when limp like these ones. Harder than their weight would suggest. No matter where you grabbed they seemed to slide away from you. Jose was prepared for that, but his team wasn’t. He heard a thud and a clatter in the next room. “No,” he said under his breath. The device in his pocket started beeping: fast, shrill, electronic yelps. He hauled the boy up higher, draping him over his shoulder and tugged at the baggy folds of his pants, staring into his pocket. One of the lights had turned yellow. “Fuck!” he said, running towards the sound.
“Muhhh…. Muhhh!!” the sound came from the woman, on the floor, writhing and half staring at everything and nothing. Her eyes locked with Jose’s but they were glass. “Muhhh!” she wailed.
“What did I do? What the fuck did I do?” Manny pressed the palms of his hands into his temples. Tess was backed into the corner, silent and stunned.
“Be quiet. Do you want to make it worse?” Jose yelled.
“You’re the one fucking screaming!” Manny screamed back.
“Muhhh…” the woman wailed, seemingly in agreement.
“What’s happening to her?” Manny asked.
“I don’t know,” Jose said, desperate to show calm despite his inner panic. “Here.” He pulled the boy off his shoulder and held him out towards Manny. “Take the kid and for the love of God, Manny, try not to screw anything else up.”
Manny acquiesced and Tess moved to help him, following along a half step behind him, holding one of the boy’s legs, unsure of what else to do.
Jose crouched by the woman and went through the checklist they’d given him. “Pulse . . .” He pressed a finger against her throat. “Check.”
“Muhhh?” The woman turned, sightless, toward his hand. He felt her breath hot on his skin.
“Breathing . . . Check,” he said. Then before he could finish he saw the problem. One of her discs had shifted. Not much, but enough to reveal a thin layer of white adhesive.
“Muhhhh.” The woman wailed, quietly.
“Muh.” Jose agreed, and slid the disc back into place. Her placid smile returned. Jose checked the device once more: green again. Thank God. He thought, bringing her outside.
They shoved the three of them in like sardines, front to back to front, the boy in the middle. Jose pulled a thick yellow strap around all three, fastening it back again, through a buckle attached to the wall of the truck, cinching it tight, pulling their bodies into an awkward embrace.
“Help me get their masks on.” He said. They would breathe on their own, otherwise none of this would have worked. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that once the back of the truck was full, there wouldn’t be enough air for all of them to breathe. So weeks ago Jose’s truck got retrofitted and the rules had changed: all the bodies got masks.
“Muhh..” said the man, quietly. Manny leapt backwards. “What the fuck was that? Did I do something wrong again?”
“No,” Jose said. “They just do that sometimes.”
The truck doors closed, the engine thrummed. Jose rubbed the cold from his hands, cupping them and breathing hard into his palms. It smelled like cigarette smoke. One down, sixty-three to go, he thought. He glanced down at the device. There were more yellow dots, more red, amidst what felt like an endless number of green. He pointed toward the house next door.
“One down, sixty-three to go,” he said.