by J L Aarne
They keep moving west. The highways become deathtraps, cars abandoned on the shoulder of the road or in medians begin to block them and there’s no one to tow them away and clear it. People determined to keep going have to go on foot, bicycle, or horseback. Some people have motorcycles but it’s nearly impossible to keep gasoline in them and they’re soon abandoned, too. For a while, there is still government and an attempt at maintaining order in the bigger cities, but the cities are hit the hardest. There’s military rule, but chaos and corruption reign. Good people who don’t want any trouble like Aarom’s and Jonathan’s families stay away.
They keep going west, not sure what they’re looking for. The bombs agitate the environment, the clouds of ashes block out the sun, volcanoes that have been dormant explode, there are severe earthquakes, it’s cold and dark and they must cover their faces with cloths to breathe, and still they end up hacking up black phlegm.
At one point, Jonathan’s father talks of taking his family to Canada and the boys plot to run away together so they won’t be separated, but nothing comes of it. Ten nights later, their camp is raided by men who kill their parents and almost everyone else. Aarom only survives because in their hiding place under the burned-out skeleton of a car, Jonathan covers his mouth to keep him from screaming and tells him to close his eyes. He can’t close his ears though and his mother’s screams and Jonathan’s arms around him become his whole world.
They keep going west even without their parents because they don’t know what else to do. They’re hungry and thirsty all the time. Others have nearly always gotten to the food before they get there, which seems strange since there aren’t really any people. They eat some outdated candy found under a shelf in a convenience store one day, Purina dog chow from a can another, sometimes grasshoppers if they can catch them. They drink water that’s gathered in old mason jars or food cans or beer bottles. Their stomachs growl all the time and the move west becomes secondary to their constant search for food and water.
They see a lot of dead people. They hide from the ones that aren’t dead because they remember all too well what happened to their parents. There is no law but the law of the jungle among the survivors and they’ll rape and murder boys as soon as girls—or eat them. Or both.
Marion Flowers finds them on a Tuesday. Jonathan has been keeping track of the days from the beginning by making tally marks on his arm with a permanent marker. Aarom’s not sure how it works without him being covered in little black marks, but Jonathan’s always been good with numbers. No one cares what day it is anymore, it’s just one of those things he does to stay connected and hopeful, so whether it’s Tuesday or it isn’t, it’s a Tuesday.
They stayed the previous night in an abandoned farmhouse and they sneak out the back when they hear a man’s boots creak on the wood floor. They’re going down the back porch steps when he sees them and calls out to them. Remembering their dead parents, they run. They hop the fence in the back and run through the tall dead grass of the field and they’re fast because they’ve run through fields, climbed trees and chased the bullet trains all their lives, but they’re weak, starving and dehydrated, too. Marion Flowers is a tall, young, healthy man.
When he catches them, the first thing he does is ask Aarom if he speaks English. Jonathan tells the man to go fuck himself and Marion Flowers laughs.
He’s thirty-two, tall and tanned and the first person they’ve encountered in a long time who looks well-fed. He tells them his name, gives them both water and some dried meat and asks them if they have parents. When they tell him no, that they were murdered, he doesn’t seem surprised. He tells them they’re coming with him and that he’s on his way to New Mexico where he’s heard there’s a colony.
Jonathan believes him. Aarom doesn’t.
Turns out there is a colony in New Mexico. A small one, but they stay and more people find them and it grows. They make their homes in an underground catacomb of caves in the center of a canyon. The people farm and keep animals and there are dogs that bark to alert the camp to intruders. Before long, it’s a small, self-sustaining village. There are rumors of others like it and people talk about visiting them and one day establishing trade with them, but people are cautious and suspicious now so it’s always one day in the future.
They’re safe enough to start planning for the future though, and that’s something.
Marion Flowers teaches Aarom and Jonathan how to hunt and how to defend themselves. They both learn it quickly and well, but Aarom is the one who spends a lot of time outside of the colony tracking and hunting, not Jonathan. Aarom stays out in the desert alone sometimes for several days and Jonathan worries about him whenever he’s gone very long, but he doesn’t ask him not to go. Aarom has a longbow that he hunts with, a gun for protection if he needs it and he takes two of their dogs with him whenever he goes. He has always been a solitary and shy creature by nature. It suits him to wander, but he always comes back.
Jonathan sometimes goes with raiding parties into the destroyed cities and, along with useful items he finds, he brings back books. He teaches the younger children to read, teaches them their numbers and a little math in the evenings and early in the morning. Flowers raises horses and Jonathan’s good with the animals so he helps him. He has never been a loner like Aarom and he enjoys the work and laughter around the fires and knowing people by name wherever he looks.
His gaze often wanders, looking for Aarom to return when he’s away, and he’s always afraid that he won’t. There are no ambulances anymore. They have a doctor, but she can’t work miracles and they don’t have much in the way of medical supplies. There are no phones, no emergency numbers to call, no way of even knowing where to look for him if he disappears and anyone who comes upon him wounded will finish him off and rob him. These are the things that Jonathan thinks about when he’s away, but the world is more dangerous now and the only thing he could do to make certain he was safe is ask him not to leave again. Aarom might stay if he did that, he knows, but he would be unhappy, so he doesn’t and he waits.
There are no fizzy popsicles in this world, no lazy summer days under the apple trees, no silver bullet trains, no Buttercup and no Bart, but there are kisses and sometimes they even taste like little green apples. Green apples, sunshine and the quiet fear of losing one another, because it can happen still and they never forget it. It can happen so fast.
Their first kiss had been when they were eleven. Halloween night, both of their mouths sticky and sweet with candy. Aarom wore a black cape with a hood and carried a rubber axe and his mother painted his face like a skull. Jonathan was a superhero, some character in a comic book that wore a blue costume and threw bolts of lightning like the ancient god, Zeus. His costume didn’t fit him as well as the character’s, the knees bagged a little and he looked silly with fake plastic muscle definition on his chest. Aarom kissed him impulsively, then immediately apologized. Jonathan said it was okay and that they should try it again because he hadn’t really been ready for it. They tried it again.
That first kiss had been like most first kisses, awkward and clumsy, but by the time they’re living in the caves, they’ve been doing it long enough to be good at it. They have a house in the cave; it’s partly carved out of the stone and partly built out of mud and rock by hand. Inside, Jonathan has painted the walls to tell the story of their journey to this place; it is spread across the walls like the inside of the Sistine Chapel. There’s a hole at the center of their domed ceiling to let out the smoke from the fire that keeps the house warm. There’s a bedchamber with a bed they made from wood and the hides of some of the animals Aarom kills. The bed is comfortable, but it’s for sleeping. When they have sex, they throw the hides down on the floor.
There are rare occasions when Jonathan goes with Aarom on his hunting trips. He has responsibilities of his own within the colony that don’t allow for him to do it often, but sometimes they get away together and Jonathan doesn’t have to wait for him. These times are more like weeke
nds or vacations than Aarom’s usual hunting trips. When he’s alone, Aarom pays more attention to the animals and their tracks, he watches for other tribes of people and takes mental note of their locations and the roads they travel. Besides hunting for meat and hides to trade, Aarom’s skills are invaluable to the colony because he alerts them when people or groups of raiders venture too close.
On the very night when Aarom sees the flag in Jonathan’s window, that is where they are in the life they never lived in the world that never was. Jonathan’s hands grip Aarom’s fingers tightly and they’re standing there together in his living room, their unlived life together flooding their minds with memories of things they never did in places they’ve never been, and it’s always been inevitable. In every life, in every place they’ve been, their lives are twisted together into a single cord. Of all the people in his life, Aarom can’t let this one go because they are each all the other has, and some part of him has always known it.
This was inevitable. This has always been the way it was going to happen.
In the desert, they lay bundled up together beneath blankets and furs, the coals from their fire like a heating pad beneath a layer of soil where they lay, keeping them warm from the nighttime chill. The moon is full and yellow, nearly orange like a pumpkin in the red and purple darkening sky. Jonathan is against Aarom’s back, his arm around his waist, and Aarom’s head rests on his shoulder.
Then Aarom’s eyes open and he’s looking at himself, staring into his own face, his gaze locking with his own from an alternate reality, and a jolt of awareness and terror passes through him. It is beautiful, the life there, but it’s built on the destruction of so much. Too much.
They can stay, he realizes. They can choose that other world and if they do, this one where he’s standing in Jonathan’s house gripping his hands and shaking would pop out of being like a soap bubble.
So fragile is the hold the machine has on the universe.
“No,” Aarom says. In his mind, he says it loudly, but when the word leaves his mouth it is nothing but a dry whisper. “No.”
“No,” Jonathan repeats, also whispering it.
Somehow, they’ve ended up kneeling on the floor. Aarom’s gaze focuses on the here and now at the sound of Jonathan’s voice and he grabs him, takes his face in his hands and tilts his head to look at him. He’s breathing and his lashes flutter as his eyes open and, incredibly, he smiles. He’s shivering and exhausted to the bone, they both are, but he smiles and he means it and he isn’t dead. That’s the most important thing; he isn’t dead. Aarom hasn’t killed him after all.
“You’re so stupid,” Aarom says. His voice catches and his eyes are watering and he understands that he’s crying but he doesn’t give a damn. He kisses Jonathan’s face and tells him how stupid he is until Jonathan turns his head and kisses him on the mouth to make him shut up.
Jonathan fists his hands in the front of Aarom’s coat and pulls him against him. Aarom has to put out a hand to brace himself against the edge of the coffee table so they don’t fall. He’s crying, so relieved that Jonathan isn’t dead, still half convinced that he is, and the saltwater taste of his tears is in their mouths as they kiss. Jonathan’s hands gentle, slip beneath Aarom’s shirt to caress skin and he wants to go where this is leading, but they’re both drained and it’s all he can do to keep his eyes open. Finally, reluctantly, he disentangles himself from Jonathan and stands.
“Aarom, what… what is it now?” Jonathan asks. He sighs and it’s partly in exasperation, but most of it is mind-numbing exhaustion. He’s just had an extra lifetime of memories poured into his brain; it’s a miracle he’s awake at all.
“I can’t,” Aarom says.
Jonathan’s eyes narrow to slits and he gets up from the floor. “You have to be kidding me,” he says. “Still? After what just happened, you’re still going to do this?”
“Just this once, yes,” Aarom says. He smiles and gestures at Jonathan, standing there fairly swaying on his feet like a drunk. “I don’t want to fall asleep on you.”
Jonathan blinks and looks down at himself like there’s something on his clothes. Then he laughs. “Oh. Right,” he says. “I guess you’re right.”
“I want to,” Aarom assures him. “I do. But we’re walking dead right now.”
Jonathan nods. “I have a bed,” he says.
“Yes, I know.”
“We could sleep in it.”
Jonathan smiles at him and Aarom smiles back. He wipes the backs of his hands over his eyes, dashing away his tears. “Okay. Just let me take the flag down first.”
“Yes, we should do that,” Jonathan agrees. “That would be awkward to explain in the morning.”
Aarom tears the flag down from the kitchen window and tosses it in the incinerating trashcan. Then they go to bed. They undress, crawl beneath the sheets and curl up against each other and sleep. On the walls and ceiling, the VR windows are programmed to a clear, dark starry night full of the soft chirping of crickets and the occasional laughing howl of a coyote in the distance.
11.
In the morning, Aarom wakes to stars and Jonathan kissing the back of his neck and for a few seconds he’s disoriented. They’re in the desert; he brought Jonathan hunting with him the day before. They didn’t catch anything except a jackrabbit for their supper, but they watched a tribe of wanderers pass by; four men, three women, an infant, two adolescent girls and one boy, and a little boy and girl about five or six years old. They’d had two horses between them, both pack animals, and a mangy, half-starved dog. They hadn’t stopped and they hadn’t wandered off the road toward the colony, so Aarom and Jonathan only watched until they were out of sight before moving on themselves. Aarom shot the rabbit when it started to get dark; the arrow went straight through its eye. They spread a blanket on the ground beside the fire and laid down—
“Are you awake?” Jonathan asks.
In answer, Aarom asks, “Where are we?”
“My house,” Jonathan says. He rests his chin on Aarom’s arm and looks down at him. “My bedroom, in my bed, it’s about ten o’clock in the morning. Don’t you remember?”
The stars and the desert are virtual reality screens on the walls and the ceiling. There is no colony; no destroyed cities and decimated populations, no cave dwelling with Jonathan’s paintings on the walls, Jonathan’s parents and Aarom’s mother are still alive and well and the Destiny Machine is holding it all together. Aarom sighs, and he’s a little disappointed because it wasn’t bad, that life, but he’s also in bed with Jonathan and he doesn’t have to be afraid to touch him anymore and Jonathan loves him. There’s a great amount of freedom in this knowledge and the tremendous weight of his secret love, which he’s carried a very long time as it grew bigger and heavier year by year, is gone.
“I remember,” Aarom says.
The bed is warm and comfortable and he could easily go back to sleep, but instead he rolls over and kisses Jonathan. He does it properly, without that weight of fear riding him for once, without hesitation, and Jonathan kisses him back and it’s perfect. Simple and perfect and addictive because he could lay there doing it forever, map every curve and crevice of Jonathan’s mouth with his tongue until they’re committed to memory.
Except Jonathan isn’t content with just kissing and Aarom realizes that he already knows the inside of his mouth. He has those memories taken from an unlived life and part of him is saddened by it because he won’t have the experience of learning it all new, but he has those memories, too, so the disappointment doesn’t last. Jonathan doesn’t allow him to dwell on it too much. He moves down Aarom’s body, kissing and nipping his skin to drive him mad and make him twitch and shiver.
“Isn’t it like we’ve done this before?” Jonathan asks him. He nips at the sensitive flesh of Aarom’s belly and laughs softly when he arches a little toward him and reaches for him. “Mhmm, like we’ve been here many times before. How else could I know what you like without asking?”
It is fascinating and something they will probably explore at length, but it can wait because Aarom won’t. He has waited too long already.
“Jonathan.”
Jonathan has shifted up the bed, moving his kisses up Aarom’s body. He makes an inquisitive humming sound in his throat as he catches one of Aarom’s nipples between his teeth and licks it to taut sensitivity.
Aarom sucks a breath through his teeth and pulls at Jonathan’s shoulders, urging him up the bed to him. Jonathan comes to him, kissing up Aarom’s neck to his mouth, stroking his hands into his hair where the dark waves curl around his fingers. His tongue slides into Aarom’s mouth, his fingers wend through his hair and over his scalp, Jonathan’s body presses him down into the soft mattress and it’s overwhelming, but he’s impatient and it’s not enough.
He tells him so, but Aarom’s not certain that he spoke aloud until Jonathan stops kissing him and reaches over the side of the bed to get something from the drawer of the bedside table. He shows it to Aarom and it’s a little bright green bottle of lubricant. It has an ad on the side of an apple with a cartoon face. It begins to chirp a song, but Jonathan shakes it and it goes silent.
Aarom laughs. Jonathan laughs too and applies a dab of the stuff to his fingertip for Aarom to taste it. It’s sour apple flavored—of course it is—which only makes Aarom laugh more. Jonathan kisses him and the candy sweet taste of apples melts down their throats as he strokes his fingers inside him. Aarom moans and wraps his arms around Jonathan’s neck, the encouraging sounds of his pleasure humming on their tongues and lips. Their hearts are racing, they’re both painfully aroused and Jonathan answers Aarom’s moans with his own as he fingers him. Jonathan finally breaks the kiss and draws in gasping breaths, pressing soft kisses along Aarom’s jaw, murmuring wordless comforts into his skin.
“Jonathan?”
“Yeah?”
“When did you buy lube for this?”
