2013: The Aftermath

by Shane McKenzie

  “Its okay, Denny,” Jez said, feeling the hot rush of blood trickle down his chest and between the gentle dip of his stomach muscle. He was hurt, but it wouldn’t kill him. He had been through a lot worse.

  “You can’t make me,” the boy cried quietly. “I won’t let you do it anymore.”

  Jez became certain Denny wasn’t talking to him. Whoever he was seeing in his dreams, it wasn’t Jez.

  “It’s okay,” he said again softly. “No one is going to hurt you.”

  The blade pushed into his skin, and Jez saw the dark trickle run down his throat.

  “No, no,” Denny said, shaking his head against the pressure of the knife, cutting deeper. Tears continued to stream down his face.

  The softly approach wasn’t working. Denny was locked into his nightmare and Jez had no idea if he actually knew there was a real knife at his throat, or if he was even aware Jez stood in front of him. He could still feel the sharp sting of pain where he had been cut, and he was amazed the pain in Denny’s throat wasn’t waking him.

  Jez made the decision.

  Aiming low, he launched himself at Denny, his body slamming into the boy’s chest, knocking him off balance. At the same time, he reached out and grabbed the wrist holding the knife. As they hit the floor, Jez slammed the hand against the floor, knocking the knife out of its grasp.

  Denny cried out. His eyes brightened and he was instantly more alert. He took one look at Jez and burst into a fresh set of tears. The boy looked so much younger than his fourteen years.

  “What’s happened?” Michaela’s frantic voice came from behind them. She saw the blood, spread like a bib across his chest and her panic increased. “Oh my God, did someone attack you?” She glanced around. “Is someone else here?”

  Suddenly weary, Jez climbed off Denny. “He was sleep-walking. He had a knife, but I don’t think he knew what he was doing.”

  Michaela looked down at Denny and saw the blood at his throat. She rounded on Jez.

  “Did you do this to him? Did you fucking hurt him?”

  Jez held up his hands in defense. “Hey, hang on a minute. Denny was the one who cut me. He did that to himself!”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but the look on his face stopped her.

  “Has he never sleep-walked before?” he pressed.

  She glanced down at Denny again and his total lack of argument convinced her Jez was telling the truth. “Yeah, he’s done it before. But he’s never hurt himself, or anyone else.”

  He took the knife away and Michaela crouched down next to Denny making sure he was alright. When she was happy Denny wasn’t badly injured she turned her attention to Jez.

  “You’re hurt,” she said.

  His shirt was wet; it flapped and stuck to his skin. “It looks worse than it is.” It was true. The cut was superficial, despite the amount of blood.

  Together they helped Denny back into bed. Exhausted, he fell straight to sleep.

  “I should thank you,” she said. “You tried to help him. If you weren’t here, God only knows what he might have done.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t hear him. I should have heard him.”

  Jez reached out and touched the back of her hand. “You can’t blame yourself. The kid obviously has issues.”

  She sniffed. “Don’t we all?” Then she remembered the blood. “Hey, you’re hurt. Take off your shirt, let me take a look.”

  “I’m fine,” he said defensively.

  “Don’t be silly.” She tugged at his shirt and he sighed, giving in, allowing her to pull it up and over his head. He grimaced as the wet material slapped against his face.

  Michaela sucked air in between her teeth. “That looks nasty.

  He saw she wasn’t looking at the thin cut across his chest, but the raw and twisted scar running down the length of his bicep and upper arm. Self-conscious, he folded his arms across his chest, partially covering the scar with the opposite hand.

  “It’s nothing.”

  He wadded the ruined t-shit up and held it against the cut, stemming the flow of blood.

  Michaela went to her bag and pulled out some of the supplies she had picked up at the store, a bandage and gauze tape, antiseptic wipes.

  “Here.” Carefully she wiped the blood from his chest and stomach. Jez tensed at her contact, it had been a long time since anyone had touched him with any tenderness. He could smell the musky scent of soap from her hair and he had to resist the urge to bury his face in it.

  “There you go,” she said, stepping back to survey her handy-work. “Good as new.”

  “Thanks,” he said, smiling at her. They locked eyes for just a moment and then she seemed to remember herself and turned away.

  “Get some sleep,” she said. “We all need to rest.”

  ***

  Dull sunshine flooded though the window, stirring Jez from his restless sleep. The night’s terrors weighed heavily upon him, but the sharp pain in his chest had dulled to a low ache. Carefully he turned to see the two other figures lying, asleep in the beds beside him, and the weight lifted. It had been a long time since he had woken in the company of anyone else and just seeing their slumbering forms moved something deep inside, even after the night’s events.

  Slowly he sat up and ran a hand through his hair, stopping just below his collar. Its length always surprised him, no matter how much time passed. There was no local barber he could drop into, and he didn’t care enough to cut it himself.

  His movement roused the others, and Michaela sat up, and rubbed a hand across her face, yawning.

  “Is everyone alright?” she asked, mid-yawn.

  Denny rolled over to face them, propped himself up on one arm. “I’m fine,” he said. “Though I’ve been dreaming about fucking fire-breathing snakes all night.”

  “Denny…” Michaela warned, implying his language.

  “You’re not my mother,” he said, his eyes thinned. “I can say what the fuck I like.”

  “Not after last night, you can’t,” she said. “You need to be on your best behavior.”

  “Last night?” He was clearly puzzled. “What happened last night?”

  “You don’t remember? How do you think you got that cut on your throat?”

  Denny brought his hand to his neck, touching the small wound. A cloud of dark confusion crossed his face.

  “It’s okay,” said Jez. “You were sleep-walking and you accidentally cut yourself with your knife.”

  Now the boy directed his antagonism towards Jez. “I cut myself? Why the hell would I do that? How do I know that you didn’t try to kill me in my sleep?”

  Jez sighed and pulled up his shirt, and then pulled away the bandage, exposing the red, raw cut. “Because you tried to take me out while you were doing it.”

  Denny saw the wound and blanched.

  “I’ve been dreaming about fire as well,” said Jez, cautiously. He wanted to build a bridge between him and Denny, but he didn’t want Michaela to think he was taking sides. “It had my daughter. She was crying for me.”

  That caught Michaela’s interest. “You have a daughter?”

  “Had,” he corrected.

  “Of course. Sorry,” she glanced down. “Was she taken in the Revelation?”

  He shook his head. “She was taken a long time before that, by a man who raped and murdered her.”

  Michaela’s eyes widened in surprise, and even Denny fell silent.

  “I’m so sorry. Does that have something to do with the reason you’re still here? I don’t mean to pry, but we all have a story.”

  Jez nodded. “It’s okay. I murdered the son of a bitch and was jailed for it.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Michaela. “Why would He not forgive that? There are so few of us left, surely unless you’ve done something really bad, He would still take you. Killing your child’s murderer must be a forgivable sin.”

  “What about you two? You hardly seem like typical criminals.”

  “It’s pa
inful,” she said. “Murder again. My abusive husband. He pushed and pushed me until one day I snapped. I stabbed him in the guts with a kitchen knife.”

  She glanced down, her hands shaking. “Best damn thing I ever did.”

  Denny’s mouth was a thin line; he obviously wasn’t keen on this “sharing” moment.

  “Same story,” he said, quietly. “Stepfather. Liked to come and see me when no one else was around, if you know what I mean. I waited till he was cold-drunk and then stuffed rat poison down his throat. He woke up and puked, but it wasn’t enough. He died in the ER four hours later. I’d do it over and over again if I had to.”

  Jez glanced between them.

  “So I guess that is the deciding factor. The ones who regret what they did, were forgiven; those that didn’t got to stay.”

  “Lucky us,” Denny said, his voice cold.

  “So what now?” Michaela said. “Is this how we go on? Just surviving? There must be others out there who are like us, not all bad, that is. At some point aren’t we going to have to come up with a plan?”

  “To do what?” said Denny. “Re-claim the world? Get the power back on? Find people jobs? The type of people who are left, it’s just not going to happen.”

  “No?” questioned Michaela. “I think there’s someone out there who plans to figure it out.”

  ***

  Mason’s night had been plagued by dreams.

  He woke, shifting uncomfortably, his body stiff. He was too old to sleep on the ground, even with a mattress to cushion his bones from the hard ground. Heat rose from beneath the earth, so at least the mattress stayed dry beneath him. Still, the warmth and the nightmares kept him sweating solidly in his sleep.

  He glanced over to the others.

  Jared lay flat on his back, his mouth open. He wasn’t quite snoring, more very heavy breathing, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. Felix slept on his front, a blanket covering his head, the heat obviously not bothering him.

  Mason climbed off the mattress and shoved the other two men awake with his foot. Jared snorted and rolled over, but Mason kicked him again.

  “Hey man, what’s your problem?” the younger man protested.

  “We’ve got things to do.”

  Felix joined in with the snorting. “Yeah, right. Like what?”

  “We’ve got someone we have to find. There are others nearby and there’s a man with them, someone He thinks can lead us.”

  “Lead us?” said Felix. “To where?”

  “I don’t need to be lead,” said Jared, scowling.

  Mason ignored him. “I don’t think it is a place. I think He believes this man has the ability to regroup us, to build us.”

  “What would be the point in that?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe it isn’t what He wants, maybe He still wants chaos and He wants this man dead. But then maybe He needs us to survive. If we all just die off eventually, what would be left for Him?”

  “If we die,” said Felix, his eyebrows raised. “Don’t we just go to Hell anyway?”

  “Maybe,” Mason said, thoughtfully. “But where would be the fun in that?”

  They left most of their stuff where it was, and headed across the park and back down into the city. The men fell silent as they walked into this valley of death, the dead fallen in every direction.

  “This is ridiculous,” Jared complained. “We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  “He’ll show me,” said Mason, confident. “He’ll show me the way.”

  The other two men exchanged a glance, but they said nothing.

  Up ahead, sprawled huge and dominating across the side of the building, the sign of the dragon loomed over them. Mason stopped, his heart thumping. He had known there would be a sign, that He would guide Mason in the right direction.

  “Who the hell paints this stuff?” Jared said. Then he raised his voice, shouting out to the city. “Where the fuck is everybody?”

  “Shut it, Jared,” Mason snapped.

  “Well, we’re supposed to be finding people—at least according to your dreams—but there is no one else around. In case you hadn’t noticed,” he said, stepping over the body of a middle-aged man, collapsed in the middle of the pavement, “everyone is dead!”

  Mason looked down and saw a bottle of water at his feet, its contents spilt onto the ground. “Not everyone.”

  Felix noticed what had caught the older man’s attention. “That could have been there for ages.”

  “No, it couldn’t. The water would have dried up by now.”

  “Maybe a dog or a fox knocked it over,” Jared said. “There are a few still alive.”

  It was true; there were still a few animals around. Those that had adapted to living a scavengers life had managed to survive, but the hardest part for them was finding clean water. There was plenty of food everywhere—all they needed to do was take a quick chomp from one of the bodies—but water was scarce.

  Mason shook his head. “It’s possible, but I don’t think so. There are others near, I can feel it.”

  ***

  Jez, Michaela, and Denny walked through the streets, keeping their eyes focused on the ground ahead.

  “So what now?” Jez asked. “Did you guys have any plans? Were you heading anywhere in particular?”

  “Are you asking to tag along now?” Michaela said, glancing at him from the corner of her eye.

  He stumbled over his words. “I guess…I wasn’t trying to…”

  “It’s okay,” she laughed. “I was only teasing you.”

  Denny didn’t respond, and Jez could only guess the boy still wasn’t happy about having him along. In his mind, three was obviously still a crowd.

  “Can I ask why you’re still in London?” Jez said, turning to look at the profile of her face as they walked. With the slight upturn of her nose and her high cheekbones, there was no mistaking she was an attractive woman.

  She shrugged. “It seemed like the right place to be. I figured if people were going to regroup, if there was going to be any kind of authority left, then this is where it would happen.”

  “And now? What are you thinking now?”

  “I have no idea.”

  They walked in silence, trying to ignore the crashed cars and dead bodies lying scattered around them.

  “I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Michaela said, eventually. “I don’t think there is going to be any regrouping. After all, doesn’t the devil crave chaos? Wouldn’t that be what He wanted?”

  “I’m not so sure. I mean, how long are we going to be able to survive like this? If disease doesn’t kill us off eventually, then just the sheer depression of it all surely will. We can’t go on, day after day, week after week, with no direction or purpose. People need that in their lives.”

  “Even people like us?”

  “Even people like us,” he echoed back.

  “You know that we don’t need to stay here,” she said. “We could all head out to the countryside, out to the coast even. There’s got to be some place we could go where we could try to get back to some kind of normality, where we could bury the dead, and try to move on.”

  “We could do that. It would be a long walk though. You and I both know that the roads are all impassable, and who knows who we would meet along the way. It could be dangerous.”

  “No more dangerous than staying here.”

  They looked at each other, knowing the decision had already been made. They hadn’t discussed it with Denny yet, and Jez wondered how he would react to being told of plans made without his input.

  “So what now?” Jez asked.

  “I don’t know. Get supplies? Prepare for the journey?”

  Something in the window of the shop next to her caught her attention and she turned to him and grinned. “Well I know something I could use. Wait here.”

  Jez and Denny stood on the street as Michaela ran into the clothing store.

  A small bell rang above her head, signaling her entrance.
A pair of jeans and trainers in the window had enticed her in and now she pulled them off the mannequin, knowing instinctively they were her size. It was almost ironic. She had always struggled with her weight, desperate to be one of those skinny, waif-like creatures, but it had taken the end of the world to actually make it happen.