The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale

by Martinez, Brian

“And maybe I never should have.”

  They're both quiet for a long time. Then dad says, “Anyway, I had the boys in the lab move your sample to the front of the line, but it's been a little slow-going with half a team.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dad goes around his desk and moves some papers around. “I have two guys out sick with the flu and another two sleeping in the infirmary.” He looks back up at mom and says, “What's wrong?”

  Mom's face is dead serious, all the pink fallen out of it. “What did you just say?”

  Dad looks confused. “A pretty bad flu is going around, I'd have it myself if I wasn't stuck in here on conference calls. I sleep more on the couch these days than I do at the apartment.” He nods to the red couch.

  Mom starts walking around the room, saying, “Oh my god. Jesus Christ.”

  “I've asked you before not to take the lord's name in vain.”

  She sits on the couch. After a few seconds she says, “It's already here.”

  “What is? What are you talking about?”

  “The sample, whatever it is, on the dig, they uncovered something that infected them.” Mom's talking really fast, nervous.

  “Didn't they get the proper immunizations? I thought it was mandatory on all these excavations.”

  “Of course they did, but whatever this is it's obviously unknown or the sensors would have detected it. That means there are no immunizations against it. That's why I sent it-”

  She puts a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. Dad gets closer to her and touches her arm.

  “Don't start thinking like that. My techs don't mess around when it comes to lab safety. They could have picked up a bug anywhere.”

  “You don't understand-”

  “It's the flu, Cait, it goes around every year. I don't see what-”

  “Alicia is dead,” mom shouts.

  Dad steps back. “What?”

  “She's dead. I watched her die. We...” She looks over at me, “watched her.”

  Dad looks from mom to me back to mom. “The flu killed her?”

  She shakes her head. “Phillip did. He killed her with his bare hands.”

  Dad leans against his desk, sits on it like his legs aren't working. “I don't understand, what does that have to do with the sample?”

  “If you could have seen him, he looked like a completely different person. His skin, his nails, his eyes. Alicia told me before Phillip went into a coma he was displaying some kind of hyper-aggressive behavior. You saw the live broadcast?”

  Dad stares at his watch, lost in his head.

  “Isaac?”

  “What? Yes, of course I watched it.”

  “Alicia said the chasm is deep, deeper than anyone knows. Bacteria could have bred down there, survived intact separate from human interaction for thousands or even millions of years. Which means-”

  “No natural immunity.”

  “The only reason Alicia wasn't infected was because she sealed herself off completely in the lab tent, but otherwise every, single team member either died or was somehow changed.”

  She says, “We could be looking at a hundred percent infection rate.”

  Dad picks up his phone and presses a button. He waits and waits. “No one's picking up in the lab.” He presses another button. “No one in security.” He presses another. “Hope isn't answering. What the hell is going on?” Just as he's about to touch the phone again, it rings. He picks up and listens for a few seconds. Then he puts it down without saying anything.

  “Who was that,” mom asks.

  “I don't know.”

  “Well what did they say?”

  “Nothing. They didn't say anything, really, they just sort of...croaked.”

  My heart starts again, thinking about Phillip's face on the screen and what he had in his hands, in those pink hands with those long nails.

  Mom says, “I think it's time to try the CDC again.”

  **

  “Right now, this is your world.” Dad sits me down on the red couch. “You don't move from this spot under any circumstances, I don't care if the president herself tells you to.”

  I look at mom.

  “He's right, honey, I don't want you moving until we come back.” She kisses the top of my head. “We'll be downstairs in the lab for a bit, but we'll be back.”

  They leave me and press the button to go downstairs. As they wait for the elevator together, even though I'm still not sure exactly what's happening, and even though I don't think it's a good thing, I'm happy to see them next to each other.

  **

  Waiting. I'm good at waiting. Being by myself, being quiet. I could do this forever.

  **

  This is taking forever.

  I know mom and dad, they don't really care if I'm on the couch as long as I stay in dad's office and don't touch anything. Nothing can happen to me if I walk around, and they can't expect me to sit on a couch all day. It's already been at least an hour. No one can sit in one place for that long without doing something, acting busy, like mom says. Idle hands, like dad says.

  All the papers on dad's desk are covered with science words that don't make any sense. I put them into a pile so his desk is neat, but then it looks weird with one, big pile of papers on it so I open a drawer, move his Rosalie beads to the side and put the papers away.

  Now it looks better. Everything where it's supposed to be, where he can find it. Just the screen on top and nothing else.

  The view out dad's window is nice. The city with all those tall, shiny buildings. If you don't look down you can pretend they're empty, just big, glass statues in the sun. A few more hours and they'll be in the sunset, when you can't see as far and the world just seems so much smaller and easier to think about.

  From way up here the people look like the things mom shows me in the microscope, moving around and bumping into each other. One of the people down there is even running after another person just like they do in the microscope. When you can't see their faces everyone looks the same, they're just made up of different colors, like the screens when you put your face real close to them and you see all the dots they're made of.

  That's what I'll do, I'll watch TV.

  With all the screens dad has there should be something good on, but every channel is playing the same monster movie, and I hate monster movies. On one channel, two women are running from a monster, and on another a monster is trying to break open a snack machine. On another there's just a dead guy laying in a bed, and you can tell he's dead because his arm is hanging over the side.

  On another two people are wearing plastic suits and masks in a bright room with longs desks and lots of machines. Some of the machines are like the ones mom uses at the museum, and they're using a few of them to put fire under little, glass tubes and spin them around and do all other kinds of things to them.

  Then I realize, it is mom and dad.

  The people running, the monster hitting the snack machine, the dead guy, they're not in a movie- they're here.

  I pick up the phone from dad's desk, run back to the screens with it and hit the button that says Lab, because that's where mom said they were going. No sound comes from the screens but I can tell the phone's ringing by mom and dad's faces. On the other screen the dead guy is still dead. On the other the running monsters are licking the floor. On the other the snack machine monster is looking around, left then right, like he smells something.

  On the phone, dad says, “I told you not to set foot off the couch.”

  “There's monsters on TV.”

  “Monst-?” He sounds confused. Then he sounds serious. “Where do you see them?”

  “On the other channels, there's-”

  All the monsters are gone. They're not licking the floor or hitting the snack machine or smelling the air, they're just...gone.

  BANG. Something loud on the phone. Mom and dad jump and look at the door.

  “They must have heard the-”

  Mom hushes him and points
to the screen. Points to me.

  I know what she means. That it's my fault, that the monster at the machine wasn't smelling the air, he was listening to it. Listening to the phone ring.

  Mom takes a long pole off the wall. She presses a sharp knife to the end of it and wraps it with silver tape to keep it in its place. She leaves the silver tape on a desk by the window and goes back by the door, and meanwhile the banging keeps coming. “We still have work to do here,” dad says, “I want you to hang up and go back to the couch right now. And don't move. I mean it.”

  I tell him Okay. Then I hang up the phone, and I keep watching the screens.

  **

  My eyes keep closing. I can't help it, watching the screens so long. The banging stopped a while ago but mom and dad keep working.

  **

  I wake up in a panic because mom and dad are gone. The bright room with long desks is empty, just the machines they were using but the door is still closed. It's like they disappeared.

  There they are, on another screen, sneaking down the hallway trying not to be seen by the monsters. Dad has the pole with the knife and mom has a glass bottle with blue stuff inside. It puts my heart fast because I know they're in trouble, staying close to the wall, walking slowly while the monsters run around on the other screens. On one of them they drag someone across the floor, someone sleeping, and I know her face.

  It's Hope. The more I look at her, the more I don't think she's sleeping.

  A monster sees them. Run mom, run dad, run, I scream, but they can't hear me. They see the monster and dad pushes the pole at it, the end with the knife, and the monster stays back, scared of the knife. Mom and dad make it onto the next screen but that's the screen where the monsters had Hope. Hope is alone now on the ground, so where did they-

  Something jumps on dad, knocks him to the floor, knocks the pole out of his hands. He fights the monster. Punches it. It bites him. Please don't let this happen, please god, please God, don't let this happen.

  Something comes up behind dad, behind the monster. It has the pole with the knife in its hands, picked up high, about to hit it. It's about to hurt him, kill him, please, no, it-

  It's mom.

  She uses it on the monster. She uses it until it breaks.

  **

  The elevator opens and mom and dad fall out of it with their masks in their hands. Dad's shoulder is red and his plastic suit is torn. Mom holds her hand to it telling him they have to stop the bleeding.

  “Are you okay, daddy?”

  He looks in my eyes and he says, “You're not on the couch.”

  I try to hug him but mom stops me and tells me to help her fix him. She pulls down his plastic suit and puts my hand where his shoulder is red and tells me to push as hard as I can, and dad yells when I do but she tells me to keep doing it. He says it's okay, to listen to her. Mom rips the bottoms of his pants into long pieces and wraps them under his armpit and over and tells me to move my hand and then she ties it tight and dad screams again even louder.

  “Get me the phone,” he says, but when he tries to call someone he can't get through. “Someone has to know what's going on here. They need to quarantine the building, put the word out to the World Health Organization and prepare for an outbreak.”

  “It's already out there.” Mom is at the window, looking at the sunset. “At the store I thought the flu was going around early. On the street people were getting sick. I thought it was the flu.”

  “And now?”

  “That's not what I think anymore.”

  Dad grunts as he gets off the floor and joins her at the window. We all look down at the city together.

  Mom holds the glass bottle up. “This is about to become the most famous laboratory in the world.”

  Now that I can see it up close, it's not a bottle with blue stuff inside.

  It's a needle.

  **

  “We need to get out of here in one piece.”

  “That's the plan regardless.”

  “I mean it, Isaac, we need to protect this. Right now we're the only lab working off an original sample.”

  Mom and dad, arguing in the dark. It's like being back home again. I know it's weird, but in a way it makes me calm to hear them fight.

  “You know you have to call him.”

  “You'll wake up Silvia.”

  “Don't drag her into this.”

  “Look who's talking.”

  “What was I supposed to do, leave her home? I didn't know it would be like this, with those things. Jesus Christ, did you see what they did to Hope?”

  “I asked you not to do that.”

  “You have to call him. You know you do.”

  Quiet. Mom and dad breathing. Me breathing, trying not to move, trying not to make a sound on the red couch.

  Phone sounds. Dad says, “It's me...You already know about it?...I didn't realize it was that...Then the serial interval doesn't give us much time.” He talks for a while, and as he does his voice gets quieter and quieter. Finally he says, “Alright, dad, I have to go.”

  “What did he say?”

  “It's already in Berlin and Hong Kong, and they suspect Mexico City and Quebec.”

  “That's not possible. That's way too fast.”

  “Their best guess is the international press, the reporters at the dig. They could have carried it onto planes back home or wherever their next assignments were.”

  “Fucking Phillip. He had to have his big show.”

  “You were also right about the immunity. The infection rate might as well be a hundred.”

  “What did he say about our synthetic?”

  “That they have it covered.”

  “Idiots.”

  “Apparently they're setting up a lab at the old mountain base. Very secretive, I had to pry it out of him, and even then he wouldn't say it by name over the phone.”

  “That's only an hour from here.”

  “I suspect he needs me more than he's letting on. He could have set up that lab anywhere in the world.”

  “Maybe he's worried about you.”

  “Doubt it.”

  It's quiet. Then mom says, “We need to get out of here as soon as possible. I have a feeling we have a very bumpy road ahead.”

  **

  Mom and dad have on their plastic suits. That means it's time to go.

  “Let's keep this as simple as possible,” mom says. “Simple is good. First thing, does this elevator go all the way to the basement?”

  “To the garage, yes.”

  It's still dark outside the windows.

  “Good. Elliot took my keys, do you have yours?”

  Dad shakes his head. “I always leave them at the guard booth. He has both sets, we'll have to see him first.”

  “Come on, think this through. There won't be a guard, everyone is either home sick, ran off or...”

  They both look at me.

  Dad says, “Right. So we take the elevator down, go to the booth, get the keys- which car should we take?”

  “Mine is bigger.”

  “But I know where mine is parked, and it's right by the elevator. The only problem is the guard booth is across the lot.”

  “Then we go to the booth, get the keys and double back.”

  “No, you and Silvia wait by the car while I get the keys.”

  “I don't think we should split up.”

  Dad says, “Sure, now you say that.”

  “Isaac...”

  Mom and dad stop talking and look at me. Dad comes over holding something in his hand but I can't stop staring at the big hole in his suit where I can see his shoulder and the red rag around it. He puts a rubber string around my head and pulls something soft over my mouth.

  Over his torn shoulder, mom tries her phone. “Until your father or I tell you otherwise, don't take that mask off. You live in it now. Got it?”

  I nod.

  “Don't touch anything without gloves, don't breathe without a mask, don't trust anything or anyone un
til we sort this all out.”

  **

  In the elevator no one says anything. All three of us stand in masks watching the lights change, dad checking his watch, the numbers going lower and lower, eleven, ten, nine, and there's so much to say it's like there's nothing to say at all, eight, then seven.

  The lights shut off and KA-JUNG the elevator stops so hard we have to put our hands out to keep from falling.

  It's quiet. No elevator sounds at all. Then the lights come back on, but this time they're blue and coming out of a different place in the ceiling and saying BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

  “Please tell me we aren't stuck in here.”

  “The city grid must have gone down.” Dad unzips his plastic suit. “The generator kicked in, but for safety the elevator doesn't run.”

  Dad takes keys out of his pocket. “There's a crowbar in there.” He points to a box on the wall. Mom pulls the handle and it swings open. “When we built the lab the extra power drain kept bringing down the grid, so I had a few additions put in.” He puts a funny key into a little hole by the buttons and turns it. The door goes CLACK. “I was tired of spending my lunch hour trapped in a tin box.”

  Mom takes the crowbar. “You should have pointed this out before we went to the lab.”

  He puts his hand out to ask for it. “We didn't need it then.”

  “Well we need it now.” Instead of giving it to him, mom takes it to the doors and jams it into the space between. Dad tries to grab onto it but she pushes him off. I can tell they're about to fight, so I slip between them and put my fingers in the doors and start to pull. Mom and dad help, and together we pull the doors open until we're looking at the middle of the floors, one up and one down. Dad sticks his head out into the bottom one, he doesn't say why but I know it's to check for monsters. They lower me down until my feet touch the floor and they tell me to stay still.