The After War

by Brandon Zenner

  As the snow covered the windows, a pale, white light filtered through. The snow seemed to glow against the glass, but as it kept falling, the cabin grew darker, until it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night.

  Simon brushed his teeth with tea made from boiled black alder bark and went to sleep. When he woke, the cabin was still dark, and he had no idea what time it was. Winston was awake and lapping water from his bowl. Simon stood and stretched and saw that Winston had pooped in the corner of the room where he was trained to poop during these periods of isolation. Good boy. The fire in the cast-iron stove had burned down to hot cinders, and Simon guessed it was the next day.

  “You hungry, buddy?” he asked Winston, who was wagging his tail and panting.

  He fed Winston, relit the fire, and went to the bedroom where he opened the window. The snow was so dense that only a scattering fell in. He used a folding shovel to begin digging a tunnel, packing the excavated snow all around the fridge. When he could not pack any more, he pried up several floorboards beside the fridge and stuffed as much as he could underneath.

  Simon was making good progress. He was now standing on the windowsill, and the snow overhead was becoming translucent. He struck at the ceiling, and after a few jabs, the snow collapsed. Bright sunlight filtered down the passageway. When he stood with the tips of his toes on the windowsill, he could just pop his head outside. The land was a sea of white, set in a tall drift against the house and piled even higher against the trees in the distance. The mound of snow covered much of the roof with the top of the chimney producing a steady stream of twisting smoke. Simon ducked back inside, closed the window, and nailed the floorboards back in place.

  “Well, Winston, at least we have sunlight and fresh air.”

  ***

  “Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die! Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die! Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die! He ain’t gonna jump no more!”

  Simon was singing and marching back and forth in the main room. Winston sat by the stove, watching.

  “Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die!”

  He had been doing this on and off for an hour, and it was becoming boring for both Winston and himself. Days passed, over a week, and the snow outside was now melted below the windows. Simon had ventured out several times, using a pair of snowshoes he had made the winter before out of young saplings and woven string. They worked all right, but he fell to his waist beneath the drifts more than once and decided it was not worth venturing far from the cabin.

  He was in desperate need of a bath, and his hair and beard had grown wild.

  There was still a good amount of food, but he would have to get more soon. Most of his traps would be collapsed by the storm, and soon, maybe the next day, he would venture farther away to check the ones shielded under trees.

  Simon stopped at the window, looking at the glaring reflection of the sun against the blanket of white.

  “Melt, you bastard! Melt!”

  ***

  There was nothing in any of the traps. Two weeks now, and nothing. Zero. Zilch. The snow had melted to a manageable level, and the air was starting to feel warmer. Soon, he would have to bathe. The water was frigid, but he would have to endure it. Washing his face and skin with a washcloth was no longer acceptable.

  He turned to Winston. “You want a bath? Hmm? You want a bath, my idiot bud-bud? My bud-bud-buddy?” Winston’s tail was going crazy, but if he could understand what Simon was saying, he would not have been so happy.

  They were walking a path that Simon had ingrained in his memory—the animal trap trail. The course first followed a stream, then veered around a wide field before looping back toward the cabin.

  They had just entered the field when Simon saw something.

  He stopped midstride. There was movement in the middle of the field. Two dark figures. Not deer. Deer would be by the tree line, grazing where the grass was shielded from the snow. They were human.

  An unsettling wave of panic struck him; the air seemed to be taken out of his lungs in a gasp. The people were far off, but it appeared that they were trudging in his direction with their eyes cast to the ground.

  Simon stepped behind a tree trunk and motioned for Winston to get lost, which the dog promptly did. Simon grabbed the lowest branch and hoisted himself up, climbing the tree with the fluidity of an animal that belongs up there, until he was far overhead.

  The two people were walking erratically. They stumbled, hunched over and clasping ragged garments over their shoulders to their chests, not having an easy go of the winter terrain. Simon could tell they did not belong in the woods. They wore many layers of clothing, and as they came closer, Simon could hear them snuffling and coughing. They looked feverish and ill, and they were deathly skinny. Simon himself was skinny, but his body was lean and strong. Their faces looked like flesh canvases stretched over bone frames. He could smell their pungent odor beneath their soiled rags as they neared. They smelled like death.

  They were directly beneath him, and Simon could feel his heart thumping against the hard side of the branch.

  Then one of the men stopped in his tracks. “What’s that?” he said, pointing to the woods.

  “What’s what?”

  “There, look.”

  Simon looked as well. From his vantage point, he could see Winston meandering back over, his tail wagging and his nose sniffing the air.

  Simon almost screamed. He almost shouted down to Winston, but he did not. He kept his mouth shut tight.

  I am the wind. I am the rock. I am the tree, and my roots grow deep ….

  “I don’t see … wait … is that a dog?” The man looked around in all directions but up. “What the hell is a dog doing out here?”

  “Who cares why he’s here.” The man had a rifle over his shoulder, and in one quick motion, he swung it around and pointed it at Winston. “He’s the only animal we’ve seen in days.”

  “I ain’t eating no dog.”

  “You not hungry enough?”

  The man seemed to think it over. Then he swung his rifle off his shoulder and aimed.

  Simon carefully swung his own rifle from his shoulder, aiming it down. Sweat was dripping off his face, and he felt like he was about to burst. Screaming Winston’s name was on the tip of his tongue. Then one man fired and the other did the same.

  But they’d shot prematurely. Winston was too far off, and the bullets went wild. Like a flash, Winston was gone. Simon felt nauseous. His hand was trembling on the rifle, and the trigger was slippery with the perspiration dripping from his face and trailing down the length of the rifle. If they had hit Winston, or if they had taken another half-second before firing, Simon would have killed them both. They would never have seen him coming.

  If Winston had died, Simon didn’t know what he would have done. He would go crazy for sure. Images of himself bashing in the skulls of the two men with his fists rushed through his mind … and it made him feel good. They had no idea how lucky their bad aim had been.

  One man started to run in the direction of Winston, but the other called out, “It ain’t worth it, Roger. You ain’t gonna catch him. Come on now, let’s go.”

  The man stopped running and stood scanning the woods. “I don’t see nothing.”

  There was no wilderness in these men. These were no men at all. They were monsters, and Simon felt he would be doing the world a favor by leaping down and striking them dead … but if he did, he too would become a monster. The evil extinguished by their deaths would be reborn in his heart.

  He watched as they walked off, then got down from the tree and followed their tracks. He stalked them for two miles until he was certain they were far past the cabin and still walking straight. He backpedaled until he got to the trail with his traps, and then jogged until he was back at the cabin. When he was in the clearing, Winston ran over to meet him, his tail wagging wide.

  “Winston!” he shouted. “My God, Winston, are you hurt?” He looked the dog ov
er, but he was fine. “You asshole, Winston! I told you to stay! You never listen—you never listen to a word I say!” He grabbed Winston around his neck, hugging him tight, the dog’s mouth panting hot air in his ear. “Don’t do that again. You can’t leave me, you hear? You can’t leave me.” Simon was crying into Winston’s fur and squeezing him tight. “Don’t do that again.”

  He let Winston go, opened the door to the cabin, and let him inside. Out of the corner of his eye, Simon saw the van. Maybe it was the rush of emotions still coursing through his mind, but he closed the cabin door, telling Winston, “I’ll be right back,” and walked to the van.

  The tarp was heavy with snow, but he pulled it back enough so that he could get to the passenger-side door. He opened the door and searched on the ground for the duffel bag his father had given him the day before he left his home. He found it and held it tight to his body as he walked back to the cabin. This was a bad idea.

  ***

  It was late and the night was dark.

  The front door of the cabin flew open, crashing back on its hinges. Simon stood shirtless in the doorway, staring up at the heavens, his chest exposed to the frigid cold.

  A scream erupted from his mouth that was barely human; the sound roaring from somewhere deep inside him. Plumes of steam escaped from his mouth to the stars above. Tears rolled down his face. He was not in his mind. He was not in his body.

  Simon took off from the doorway, running without shoes or socks, his feet beating upon the frozen earth. His vision pulsed with his racing heart, and he grabbed a long stick from the ground as he ran. As he came upon the first figure-four trap he had set under a bush, he bashed it with the stick, not stopping his pace.

  The path was illuminated in the full moonlight and dazzling stars above. Simon went from trap to trap, bashing them with the stick, kicking them with his feet, and scattering the precisely cut and positioned pieces of wood with his hands. He ran so fast that his memory alone drove his feet forward as he jumped over the familiar fallen trees, splashed across the small streams, and slid over the frozen pond to the circular-cut holes in the ice with the X-shaped fishing traps above.

  On the table in the cabin, illuminated by a single candle, were the contents of the duffel bag. The stacks of money were now scattered on the floor from when Simon had smacked them off the table before running out the door and losing his mind in the night.

  Beside the flickering flame was an array of photographs his dad had put in the duffel bag without Simon noticing. Simon had first seen them during his drive two years prior, and he vowed that he would not become obsessed, stare at them day after day, mourning the departure from his old life while far away in the solitude of British Columbia. So he had left them in the van and vowed to not look at them until it was time to leave for home.

  Moments ago, he had broken that vow. Subconsciously, he knew that it was time to leave the cabin.

  He looked from picture to picture, all of his family, all with smiling faces and love in their hearts. There were pictures of him next to his father—arms over each other’s shoulders, smiling for the camera. He looked younger, softer. Chubby even. There were baby pictures of him and his brother—one of him being washed in the kitchen sink, his mother with her hair held back in a bandana smiling beside him. His mother’s face was so young, so bright, so cheerful, so proud, no lines of worry or age. She had so much to look forward to back then—two babies, a well-established family business, and the naive security of youth.

  There was a picture of his dad in a white V-neck T-shirt—not a suit—laughing, as a young Simon sat in a high chair, his face and head covered with what looked like spaghetti.

  Simon looked through the photographs, and the emotions that raged inside him took control.

  He leapt over a fallen tree, screaming, crying, and bleeding from small cuts on his arms and face. He crashed through a cluster of bushes to a clearing on the other side, which was vast and reflected the light of the moon along the curves of the snowy ground.

  Then he came to a dead stop. He had burst through the bushes and nearly run straight into the side of a full-grown moose traversing that moonlit plain.

  He fell on his back in a mound of cold snow.

  The frightened moose reared up on his hind legs, the moon behind the animal shrouding it in shadow so that it appeared mystical against the intense starlight of that crisp night. Clouds of steam escaped from its snorting nostrils as it bucked. This was the closest Simon had ever been to a moose, and the size of the beast was both awe-inspiring and terrifying. The deep earthy smell of the animal’s fur and steaming breath lay thick in the air. The negativity and hopelessness that had pervaded Simon’s thoughts were gone in a flash.

  The animal came back down on all fours, its antlers looming huge over its head. There was a glint of the moonlight in the wetness of its eyes, as they stared at each other for what could have been an eternity. Then the beast turned and lumbered off, vanishing into the brush.

  For some time, Simon did not stir. Then Winston appeared, nudging up against his back, licking the wet snow from his face.

  “Winston. Ohhh, Winston. I miss them … I miss them so much.”

  He hugged his dog tight.

  “It’s time to go home, Winston. It’s time to go home. We pack tomorrow.”

  Chapter 19

  Wicked Things

  The feeling of sunlight on their pickled flesh would have been marvelous, only there was no sunlight to be seen. The rain was sporadic as the day progressed into evening, but in the intervals when it ceased, a heavy fog rolled in, and Brian and Steven were miserable.

  The old man and Charlie were a full day’s walk behind them. Under a massive tree, with the ground dry and shielded from the onslaught of rain, Brian could make out the faint tracks of the old man’s cane beside his footprints. This gave Brian some hope, because if the old man could traverse the coming path, they would have no problems. And so far, the walk that day had been the easiest since leaving the bunker.

  Brian’s throat was swollen and his nose was congested. Steven had to stop at times with fits of coughing and sneezes.

  Steven said, “I’m getting sick, Brian.”

  “Me too.”

  “You think—” Steven paused to cough and hack up a ball of phlegm in his mouth, and spit it off to the side of the trail. Brian closed his eyes. Steven had so many bad habits—many that he used to perform in public without the slightest hesitation. This grunting, sinus-clearing noise he was one of them. It was disgusting.

  Christ, I’m gonna punch him, Brian thought. He’s a fucking animal.

  Steven finished clearing his sinuses and continued, “You think we got the … you know, what Stanley had?”

  “No. Don’t talk like that. We’re just sick, is all.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “We don’t got the disease. Don’t get yourself riled. If we did, we’d be dead already. Would have died in the bunker, right after Stanley.”

  “We had those suits in the bunker. Maybe the disease is still around, out here.”

  “Those suits didn’t amount to jack. The doctors and scientists, they had better hazmat suits than the ones we wore, and they’re all dead. If we were gonna get sick, we’d know by now. I reckon we’re immune, like the others we’ve seen.”

  “But—”

  “That’s enough of that.”

  They were close to Bethany’s town of Aurora. If they could get to her bunker before a fever broke, they would be all right. Her bunker would be well-supplied, just as their own, and there they could recover and rest. Rest, above anything else.

  Only a few more days of this hike … only a few more days.

  Brian stepped over a cumbersome rock, stumbling for a moment before catching his balance. “Let’s start looking for camp,” he said.

  Steven nodded.

  They continued on the path another mile until the ground opened to a flat clearing. In the center of this clearing was a circle of rocks.
>
  “Campfire,” Brian said, walking over. He leaned and touched the rocks, and felt the cinder with his fingertips. “The rocks are barely blackened. Used once, maybe twice.”

  Steven asked, “When?”

  Brian felt the coals. “Several days. That old man and Charlie might have camped here. Look.” He pointed to areas of scattered dirt that the rain had not washed away. He saw faint telltale imprints of a cane. “Nobody else has been here. Not today at least. I reckon we’re safe.”

  Steven stood on the edge of the clearing.

  “Come on now, let’s get a fire going. The rain stopped.”

  “You sure it’s safe?”

  Brian looked at the trees circling the clearing. They were tall and thick.

  “I think so.”

  Steven walked to the center of the clearing and sat heavily on a log by the fire pit. Brian sat next to him. The log was spongy with water.

  “Let’s get wood,” Brian said. “Lots of wood. We need a big fire tonight, for sure.”

  “I’m so cold I can’t feel my feet.”

  “Let’s get on with it.”

  They gathered a small pile of wood, and Brian dug away the ash that had turned to mush in the center of the fire pit. He crunched together a ball of dried grass and pine needles, placed it in the center, then draped a few twigs and small sticks over it. He dug his lighter out of his bag and lit the dried tinder.

  The tinder took to flame, and Brian fed the small fire until it was burning steady. Once it was burning on its own, he continued gathering wood with Steven. They had a full hour of sunlight before it would become difficult to venture far from camp, and Brian wanted to have more than enough wood to burn through the night. He wanted a bonfire. He wanted heat and security, and the feeling of warmth on his cold, sodden skin. A fire would cure them; a fire would dry the wounds on their feet and restore their spirits. A fire would—

  A scream jolted him from his thoughts.

  A scream so guttural and surreal that panic struck him deep in his core. It took him a moment to realize the sound did not belong to an animal, but came from Steven, who was a short distance away collecting wood.