by Stevie Kopas
Trudging down the middle of the road he appreciated the peace and quiet of the end of the world. The lush greenery swaying in the breeze coming off the water, the soft whisper of tides touching the shores. Before he knew it, he stood on the docks. The empty boats rocking in the wake, the abandoned Dockside Bar and Grill’s closed doors tempted him. Looks like nobody’s home. He approached the building cautiously and tapped his wedding band against the metal of the dock’s banister loudly. He looked around and listened. Watching the windows closely, he tapped again. There was no response from his surroundings and no movement inside.
Opening the door, Samson took his knife out and poked his head inside. The place smelled of spoiled food so badly he thought he would vomit. Coughing, he removed his handkerchief from his pocket and held it up to his face. Tables and chairs were on their sides strewn about the floor. Broken drinking glasses crunched under his feet with every step he took toward the bar. I could use a drink. Or four. Samson moved behind the bar and raised his eyebrows. He grabbed a bottle of American Honey whiskey and made a face at it. Ought to help with the smell at least. Throwing the top behind him he turned the bottle upside down and drank. He grimaced as the liquid warmed his insides and he exhaled loudly. Rotten fruit, jalapenos and olives littered the bar counter. Moving toward the kitchen he took another swig from his newly acquired bottle.
Samson peeked through the grimy glass to make sure no surprises lurked in the depths of the rotting fish smell and set the whiskey down on the bar top. He brought the handkerchief back up to his mouth and walked into the kitchen. The place was filthy, filled with maggots and rotting fish. His stomach turned and he immediately regretted the American Honey. Hands on his knees and vomiting, Samson knew he just needed to check the stock shelves for dry goods. “Pull it together big guy,” he said to himself and spat. Holding the knife up, he listened for any response to all the noise he had just made. Satisfied with no company to greet him from the shadows, he moved on to the pantry. He thought about Moira and how funny it would be to see her in this kitchen right now, sobbing and retching, probably pissing herself with fear. He noticed an abundance of empty cans littering the floor and kicked one out of the way as he walked to the pantry.
“Yeah!” He shouted in glee as he discovered instant mashed potatoes, a few cases of soft drinks and a bag of rice. “You’re probably full of fucking bugs, but I don’t care.” He talked in a baby voice to the bag of rice as he tied it up and set it by the pantry door. He shrugged his bag off his shoulders and put a few of the bottles of soda into it along with the 4 boxes of InstaMash. “Gotta get my carbs!” He cheerfully said to no one and zipped up the bag, placing it onto his back. He put his knife back in its place and grabbed the bag of rice, not a gold mine, but it’ll do just fine by me. He quickly exited the putrid kitchen and grabbed the American Honey on his way by the bar, you’ll taste better in open air.
Samson figured he had lucked out a bit and decided to use this peaceful time by himself to celebrate. Setting down the bag of rice outside the entrance, he strolled down the docks, admiring the luxury boats that were not his. “They’re money pits Sammy, we have plenty of friends with boats.” Moira’s voice echoed in his head as he remembered when he told her he had spent the day looking at potential purchases a few months back.
“I’ll take this one you bitch.” Samson chuckled as he took a drink from the whiskey bottle. He placed his belongings down on the dock and boarded a gorgeous Viking Sport Cruiser.
The day was overcast but no rain. The breeze felt amazing on Samson’s face as he sat down and put his feet up on his dream boat. He closed his eyes and pretended for just one moment that everything was right with the world on this early October afternoon and he was simply relaxing on his new boat. For the first time in a long time, Samson had a genuine smile on his face. He opened his eyes and looked out at the water. He wished he could just leave on this boat right now, set off into the sea through Paradise Bay and leave the crumbs for the birds. He remembered how much his son enjoyed swimming, how much his daughter loved fishing. The three of them would take trips without Moira, she wouldn’t dare get her hands dirty or risk being seen while sweating. They would laugh for hours, Samson couldn’t remember seeing joy like that on anyone else’s faces but his children’s. The time seemed to stand still on those days, and he frowned at the thought of never have another day like that.
The sudden sounds of footsteps running on the dock toward the boat jolted him from his calm and he jumped to his feet. Samson’s knife was already out when the small figure leapt onto the boat in a blur at him. He grabbed the figure in midair and threw it to the floor of the boat. A large piece of PVC pipe clattered off to the side and the figure yelped in pain as Samson forced a knee into its chest and raised the knife, ready to plunge it into its skull.
“Please!” The small figure cried out finally.
“What the fuck…” Samson’s eyes focused, his breath caught in his throat, his face red with rage. He lowered his knife as he realized the figure he had pinned down was a teenage girl. Her big brown eyes stared up at him wildly.
“Please!” She cried again, breathing heavily, eyes wide.
“Why would you attack me?!” Samson yelled. “You must have been watching me! You must have known I wasn’t one of them!” His knee was still firmly placed on her chest, he didn’t know if he could trust her.
“You stole my food. “ The girl responded, panting and angry. Samson was in awe. He had assumed she was an eater, and rightfully so. She smelled of rot, but only because she had probably been spending a lot of time in the restaurant. He leaned back and removed his knee from her body, with the knife still in hand he backed away from her and kicked the pipe out of reach, he didn’t know her plans.
The girl scurried back and away from Samson, staring at the pipe he had kicked out of her reach. “You stole from me, I’m sorry. But you stole my food, and that’s all I have. I haven’t seen any other people, and I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t know what else to do.” She wiped what Samson thought may have been a tear from her face and locked eyes with Samson. Her long brown hair was matted to her head and face and she wore a ripped pair of blue jeans with a tattered purple t-shirt.
“How long have you been here? Are you alone?” Samson’s voice was more stern than he had intended it to be. He couldn’t believe his eyes. This young girl, who looked so much like his own daughter, had just tried to attack him with a piece of plumbing.
“Six days.” She eyed his knife. “I came from the city.”
“By yourself?” He couldn’t mask his shock. “I can’t believe it, the highway’s a mess, how did you get here?”
“On foot.” She swallowed hard, “and yes, I am alone.” She pulled and twisted on a string of her hair. Samson recognized this as a nervous tick. His daughter would twist her hair between her fingers when Moira would yell at her for doing something not to her liking. Then Moira would simply yell more about damaging her hair and causing split ends.
He lowered his knife. “How? How could you make it here from the city by yourself?”
The girl pulled her knees into her chest, her emaciated frame grew smaller as she hugged her legs. “I ran.” Her gaze remained at her feet as she continued. “I lived in the city with my brother and father.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I’m sure you know. When people started getting sick it got bad real fast. My father wouldn’t let us leave, but we needed to eat. So my father left for some food.”
“Did he ever come back?” Samson’s tone of voice had completely changed now. He thought of how he left every day, left his children alone with Moira.
“Yes.” The girl’s eyes moved from the floor of the yacht to Samson and back to the floor again, almost as if checking on him, making sure he was listening. “He was attacked. Almost made it home perfectly fine, but he was attacked, on our street, right in front of our building. He had told us there was a woman who was hurt. She was bleeding a lot and c
rying, begging him for help. My father was a good man, I know he couldn’t ignore her. He had tried to pull her off the street into the building but he said out of nowhere two other women came running at them.” She didn’t blink as she told her story, it was not the first time, and it would not be the last. But she would stop between sentences, swallowing lumps in her throat and widening her eyes so that the tough exterior she had built up did not crack in the slightest.
“You don’t have to-“
“He said they were screaming like animals.” The girl cut him off abruptly with a glare as she continued. “They attacked the woman he was trying to help. They were clawing her and biting her, trying to eat her legs. My father had never hit a woman before. He said even though they weren’t really even women anymore, he wished he hadn’t hit them out there in the street anyway, they might not even have noticed him. But before he knew it he said they were on him like rabid dogs. One of them bit him. Tore a nasty chunk clean right out of him. The woman he had tried helping began screaming even louder, trying to get their attention. It worked enough for my father to grab his bag and shut himself inside of our building.” Samson saw in the girl’s eyes the smallest glimpse of grief. “I had never seen so much blood before. It was like watching a movie.”
“I know uh, I know what you mean.”
She shrugged and continued, “The last thing my father said to me and my brother was to run. He said ‘you get out of this city and you run. You get to the water and you get out of the city’ and so that’s what we did. We ran. I ran.”
Samson was amazed as he listened to this girl tell a braver tale than his own. “We ran past everyone and everything. There were fires and accidents, and sounds I never in my life want to hear again. We met up with some other people. Good people. And then things got a little more complicated. So that’s when it was just me. Running. And when I got out of the city I was more careful and took a little more time, slept in abandoned cars and stuff. I did what I could to get here. I can kill the slow ones. But the fast ones, they’re somethin’ else.”
“You’ve had to kill?”
“Yes.” She looked up and met Samson’s eyes. “I killed my own father and then my brother when the time came.” Samson was taken aback by the nonchalant manner in which she had admitted to killing her father and brother. “They weren’t my family anymore. I think that was everyone’s problem in all of this, nobody could let go of something that had already let go of them.”
Samson briefly thought of Moira, of his children. He was angry again as he took in her last statement but tried not to let it show.
“If everyone had just listened.” She laughed to herself as she looked down at the floor again, twirling her stringy hair. “I know it sounds stupid, but if people had followed directions, stayed inside, stayed away from the sick ones, well, I don’t know. But, I think we were all just too damn stupid to not let ourselves get eaten.”
Samson sat silent, stewing in his rage, a teenage girl making more sense of the apocalypse than he ever could.
“But I know what I have to do. I don’t know why I should keep trying. I know that there isn’t anyone coming to save me. But I know I can save myself, save the people I love from a fate worse than death, and maybe…” she knocked her head back and stared up at the cloudy sky. “Maybe the next time I get the chance, I help save someone before it gets ugly.”
Samson didn’t know what she meant by it, but his anger subsided and he liked what she had said. He stared at this girl on the floor before him and smirked, he couldn’t begin to understand what she might have gone through to get here, but here she was. Alive.
“What is your name?” The girl in the purple shirt asked him calmly, still staring up at the sky.
“Samson.”
“Have you not had to defend yourself, Samson?”
“Of course.”
“Did you know any of these things that you’ve defended yourself against?”
“Yes. Some.” He joined her in looking at the sky. “A good friend. Some neighbors. A security guard. Not my family.” He closed his eyes.
“I don’t know where you draw the line Samson, but I am alive. And these things,” the girl suddenly stood up and slowly moved toward him, her demeanor suddenly almost threatening, “these things want me dead. I’ve had a lot of growing up to do in a very short time, and I can tell you that what you’ve done is no different than what I’ve done. And for the same reason I’m sure. To live. So if you don’t mind, I’ll be going. I can find other food for myself.”
Samson was frozen in place as the girl grabbed the PVC pipe and shot him a glare before stepping off the boat onto the dock. He was overwhelmed by her frankness and strength. Her desire to continue even though she was alone was so glamorous in such a bleak landscape. “Wait!” He called out to the girl that he so immensely wished was a child of his own, surviving in an upside down world that didn’t deserve her. The girl in the purple shirt turned around. “What’s your name?”
“Veronica.”
“Veronica, I can tell you’re a better man than me.” Veronica begrudgingly smiled in response to his unexpected remark. Samson’s entire demeanor had changed suddenly. It was almost comforting to her. “What do you say to some fishing?”
VI
Having one of his own, Samson knew how to deal with teenage girls; whether the world was normal or not. As luck would have it, when he had turned to stop Veronica from leaving he noticed the fishing poles underneath the seats toward the back of the boat, and what better use for the dead rotting fish of the restaurant than for bait?
As the two fished off the docks of Paradise Bay, they bonded as only a dead man's daughter and a man consumed by obscurity could. The moments, like still frames in Samson's mind, burned a hole into his being. The bitterness of not being able to take his own daughter out to do the things she once enjoyed, the sadness of knowing his 9 year old son would never grow to be a man in a normal world, welled up in his chest like a fire, and then temporarily subsided again.
In the remaining daylight hours that they spent together, they had come to know each other’s stories, each other’s lives from the world before and the world they now lived in. Samson had told this girl more than he had told anyone about himself in his entire life. The man Samson had become was not the man he once was, “Or maybe,” as Veronica had put it, “this is who you were meant to become.”
He told her the story of Al. From the moment he threw himself onto the gas station’s floor the day that Al saved his life he hated him. Hated him maybe for saving him, but hated him more for turning out to be just like one of the scumbags he had once defended in court for a fat pay day. The rapists, the molesters, the simple country fucks who murdered one another for drugs or for fun. It was once a job that paid, but in their new world Samson new Al embodied the perfect characteristics to bring home to Moira and the children. Only it wasn’t just the need to fulfill Moira’s requests that helped him decide what to do with Al, it was the fact that he knew Moira would be furious with him for bringing home a criminal. “What did she expect?” He asked Veronica as he cast out another line into the bay. “That I would bring home an outstanding upper class citizen?” He scoffed. “For one, I don’t think they exist anymore. And basically it boils down to I didn’t think I had it in me to bring home someone that didn’t deserve to die.”
He continued the story of Al, vaguely discussing the details of how things got messy. Al had broken his promise to keep his cool, as Samson knew he would. He had pulled his shotgun out, slamming the weapon into Samson’s chest and knocking him to the ground. He ordered Moira to undress, slowly, relishing in the misery that he for a split second believed he was inflicting upon the couple. His behavior had only fueled Samson’s hatred for his kind. He remembered laughing at him, laughing so much while gasping for the air that had been knocked out of him. Hysterically laughing on the floor because what Al didn’t know is that Moira loved to put on a show. Moira was even crazier than Al. Between
the laughter and the grinning, dancing woman in her underwear before him, Al had been confused and distracted long enough for Moira to smash her prized Tiffany’s lamp over his head, knocking him out cold. Samson’s laughter continued as Moira screamed at him uncontrollably to “shut the fuck up” and “clean up the fucking mess” he’d created. He told Veronica of the long haul of dragging Al’s heavy unconscious body up the staircase, how the nearer he grew to the closed door of his son’s bedroom, his temporary insanity had deserted him, the noises from inside got louder, and the knot in his stomach grew tighter.
“How many?” Veronica asked without looking at him. She stared at her filthy hands, covered in the rotted guts of what someone might have eaten for dinner on a night that seemed so long ago.
“Two.” He listened to the water sloshing beneath them. “The first one was the housekeeper. That’s how I knew for sure Moira had snapped.”
Samson continued his story. His son, his curiosity getting the better of him and despite his father’s wishes, snuck outside to find out what his father had been doing in Will’s yard on that fateful day. Moira had been entertaining herself, playing dress up and Samson was freshening up in the back of the house. His son was completely free to explore. Before anyone had even noticed he was missing, Robbie burst into the house covered in blood. Leti, their housekeeper of nearly 6 years began screaming as if she were being attacked. When Samson heard the commotion he practically flew across the vast expanse of the first level of their once beautiful home. Keira, his daughter, stood silent and unmoving, not watching the scene in the living room, but scanning the front yard nervously through the cracks in the freshly boarded windows for any unwanted company. Moira leapt from the staircase and threw herself to the ground beside their son before Samson had reached him.
