Gorge, a novel in progress by Michael Gullo (2026)
“I guess we fix breakfast and figure it out.”
“Figure – it. I guess that it is the loaded word.”
-the end of the modern world as we know it. Except this is government imposed. I…-
“One of my girls actually writes this stuff – Hundreds of girls over the years, and I never had one that writes collapse fiction.”
“It really was a cool year, wasn’t it? I had a kid – did I mention this to you? – He got accepted at University of Tennessee Forensics program because of the body farm.”
“What’s a body farm?”
“Oh, man. If you think our Mill Creek is cool, you gotta see this place. It’s UT’s Anthropological Research site, but rather than find a site, they created one in the eighties. This one doctor put up some fence and some razor wire behind the hospital, and he started posing donated bodies for criminal investigation studies.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yup. He buried them in shallow graves, stuck them in car trunks, in water – all so they could study decomposition.”
“That’s gross. How do they keep it… How do they keep people out?”
-themselves safe and cozy, and the people that actually paid for it, us, you and me, if we approached one of those facilities in search of food and shelter, we would be shot on…-
“Is he just gonna go on like that?”
“People are pretty sick. I can’t imagine razor wire’s much of a deterrent.”
“That Air Force base across the street would beg to differ.”
“That hasn’t been a base in thirty years.”
“Yeah, but the fence is still there. It was Strategic Air Command.”
“I grew up on Mather in Sacramento. It was a SAC base too.”
“I underthink all of that sometimes.”
“When I passed campus, not a soul was stirring.”
“Nine or so in the morning on an off day – not exactly a college student’s hustle and bustle.”
“What are they gonna do?”
“I haven’t received an email since Friday evening, but that said the Clinton Dining Hall is open all weekend on the normal schedule.”
“Nothing about Kent Café?”
“No. But I think that’s where we go – we pack up the groceries and go back.”
“I mean, why?”
“We have power right now, but you know that’s not gonna last.”
“This is unreal. We just got out of there.”
“It’s as much home as this is.”
“I lived in that place four years, Kyle. You don’t know. You did one measly semester.”
“They’ll have power longer.”
“We just got here, Kyle. I got pillows on the couch. Pillows, Kyle. And it doesn’t smell like cold war painted concrete.”
“Wait, is that Maddie?”
“Get that door latch for her. Hold on Maddie.”
“Hey, girl, get in here.”
“You’re soaked.”
“I saw your TV on, and…”
“Here, take this. Kyle, go get her a towel.”
“I saw your TV on, and I came over. My YoutubeTV’s cooked since Saturday night.”
“Come in. Don’t worry about that.”
“My shoes are wet.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it in a minute.”
“Leave them over here?”
“Next to the door. Your toes are so cute! What color is that?”
“It’s OPI, I’m Not Really A Waitress.”
“Oh, that one’s fun.”
“Here, Maddie. Here’s a towel, and I bought you this sweatshirt.”
“Good idea, Kyle. Go in the bathroom and get out of that wet thing, Maddie.”
“Thank you so much, guys.”
“You need some PSUC gear anyway, now that you’re in, Class of thirty-one – That’s decided right?”
“Kyle, you don’t talk to a girl through the bathroom door.”
“I do too.”
“Yeah, it’s my favorite.”
“That storm door needs fixed again.”
“I’ll close it.”
“Hey, guys. I’m so glad you’re here. How does your TV work?”
“Look at it. That’s the sports guy, and he took over the station, and he’s broadcasting rogue.”
-assemble at City Hall, and go from there. I propose a day of action…-
“That’s so random. What is going on?”
“Where’s your mom?”
“The hospital. Sus times got that place hoppin.”
“Have you been home alone all – weekend?”
“For real. She came home last night with food from the cafeteria and fell asleep on the couch for literally two hours. Her phone’s cooked too, and she woke up in a panic.”
“Did she go back to work?”
“For real.”
“She’s a rockstar.”
“No cap. She wants me to meet her there, but I went to my car last night to get a better signal and I fell asleep with the radio on.”
“Battery die?”
“Ran out of gas.”
“I’m cooking this cabbage right now, and I need a little help.”
“So, not Lu Rou?”
“Yes, that too. But first it’s rice and cabbage with peppercorns.”
“That’s a lot of cabbage.”
“This guy’s still talking. I’m gonna go watch him a while.”
“Good – Maddie, light that candle.”
-mean let’s be serious. It isn’t right. They sit fat and farting in their fortified bunkers with military guards, and they cut the people – the people that elected them – off from all forms of communication. Meanwhile, cities burn…-
“There’s no evidence of that at all.”
-starvation and anarchy.-
“You’re the one calling for anarchy.”
-tyrannical.-
“Seriously, are you listening to this?”
“When did he start watching the news again?”
“This isn’t news. This is the problem with the news. Nowadays, they’re activists first.”
-do something. I, for one will be at City Hall at 2:00PM today, and I call upon all of you to join me…-
“God forbid you say, peacefully along the way.”
-in charge. We are in charge. We are the people. On July 14th, 1789, the people of France rose up against the Bastille. Within a week Paris had a new mayor, its own militia, and a flag. Within a month the aristocracy's privileges were abolished and the countryside had burned its manor rolls. Within four years the king was dead. It changed every government in Europe and is the reason the word revolution means what it means. And I changed us here in America. The French, unable to maintain their presence in the Colonies, ceded their land to the British.- One band of holdouts came to be known as Montreal.-
“Are you listening to this garbage? This guy literally has not the first clue what he’s talking about. Canada went to Britain in 1763, twenty-six years before the Bastille, at the end of the Seven Years' War. What the revolution did was sell Louisiana: Napoleon lost Haiti to a slave uprising and dumped the whole Mississippi basin on Jefferson in 1803 for fifteen million dollars.”
“Does he think we’re listening to him?”
“This is why we stopped watching the news.”
- One band of holdouts came to be known as Montreal.-
“The Patriote rebellion in Lower Canada, which is Quebec. French farmers rose against a British colonial government that ruled without an elected majority. The British army crushed them at Saint-Denis, Saint-Charles, and Saint-Eustache, burned the villages, and the rebels ran south across the border to the Champlain valley. Plattsburgh, Rouses Point, and Swanton were their bases. In 1838 they went back north from Rouses Point and were beaten at Odelltown, a mile over the line, and the British hanged twelve and shipped fifty-eight to Australia. Americans formed secret Hunters' Lodges all along the border to help them, and the U.S. Army came to Plattsburgh to stop it.”
“Which one of them is right?”
“I’d bet on Kyle every time.”
“He’s like a lowkey genius.”
“Nothing low key about it.”
“That candle smells so good. What is it?”
“Au du Cabbaje.”
“Candle’s helping, though. Lilacs. I knew it.”
“Honey, are you watching this? This is how it starts. Some idiot with half an idea and none of the knowledge – Literally, that fence across the street there – that literally started in 1838 when the U.S. Army garrisoned a barracks in 1838 specifically to keep Americans from crossing over to help Canada shut its people up. He’s literally making it up.”
“Kyle, if he makes you angry, maybe you should stop listening.”
“I can’t do that. This – rubbish. This is the last television any of us are likely to watch for a very, very long time.”
“Why does he say that?”
“I don’t want to scare you, Maddie, but you’re a grown woman now, and I don’t know if this really is the end of the world as we knew it last week, but it’s certainly a time to have your shit together and to know that what’s coming is not the police - Why do you keep looking out the window?”
“It’s nothing.”
“See, that’s exactly what I mean. You’re looking out that window every couple seconds – get this strainer. You’re looking out the window like you’re waiting for someone. And being aware of it is exactly what I mean when I say, you gotta keep your head on straight.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Not nothing.”
"Do you remember Danny, end of the block?"
"We almost bought that house instead of this one. Only reason we didn't was the wrong side of the cul de sac, every car turning around would be shining their headlights across the front of our house."
"Jean Carlos was his homeboy. He was so cute, but I was sixteen, and Mom got a restraining order against him."
“Like jail bait trouble?”
“Threat of jailbait trouble. It expired a week later on my seventeenth birthday.”
“That’s your mom. She knows how to send a message. So you’re waiting for him?”
“No. He’s been driving by all weekend. I got in the car last night to get a better signal, and now I’m here.”
“Well, we’ll eat a little food when this is ready, and I’ll drive you to the hospital to see your mom.”
“Is that a gun?”
“Don’t touch that. --- Kyle, why did you move this in here?”
“What, you get to have a shootout with the Marketplace Townies, and I can’t arm up for the Visa card apocalypse?”
“That’s badass, big black gat and a Cajun Shrimp manicure.”
“That’s what I forgot to buy – shrimp. Put some rice on that plate. Kyle, come eat this.”