by Kate L. Mary
For just a moment, I truly believed it was true.
The blast happened just as I turned to face the mall. The violence of it threw me through the air in a burst of pain and heat, and I landed so hard that all the air whooshed out of my lungs. I couldn’t move, and all around me the world was engulfed in deafening sounds that made it impossible to think. The crunch of metal and glass came from all sides, and above that was a roar I couldn’t comprehend. It was so loud that I had to cover my ears, but that did nothing to block out the noise. It felt like it would crush me with its strength. Like the world was imploding and I would soon be sucked into the heat and noise surrounding me.
Above me, the previously cloudless sky had turned dark. Black and gray clouds bubbled up as if from nowhere and stretched across the sky, growing bigger and darker with each passing second. There was nothing natural about them. They seemed to be centralized, as if they were all coming from the same spot and pushing their way out in hopes of engulfing every inch of blue, and they were darker than even the darkest storm cloud. Threatening. Terrifying.
I had to gasp a few times before I was finally able to fill my lungs, and even though the air was grimy with dirt, it helped bring my mind into sharper focus. My heart was pounding in my ears as I took stock of my body, wiggling fingers and toes, moving limbs. Everything hurt, but there didn’t seem to be any major damage, and once I was sure I was basically okay, I forced myself to sit up.
That’s when the mall came into view. Or at least the spot where the mall had once stood.
“No,” I mumbled as I scrambled over rubble and glass to get to my feet. “No!”
My legs were shaking as I hurried forward, and more than once I fell to the ground, cutting my knees in the process, but I made myself get back up. I couldn’t trust my eyes. I knew it had to be a mirage and that if I could just get there I’d discover that everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. So I ran, passing mangled cars that had been thrown during the blast and heaps of rubble that had come from nowhere. The cars were now on top of one another, reduced to twisted pieces of metal and glass that looked nothing like the vehicles they had once been, and all around me there were piles of rock or mangled metal that had to have come from the blast.
The sky grew darker by the second, and my heart pounded harder with each step I took. The closer I got, the less I was able to deny what I was seeing. It was as if the mall had been blown off the face of the earth or sucked into the ground. There was nothing but a crater now. A hole in the pavement that when I dropped to my knees in front of it and peered down, seemed to go on forever. It was deep and wide and black and crushing in its magnitude.
“No,” I said again, this time covering my face with my hands.
My body shook with sobs, and when another explosion rocked the ground beneath me, this time further away, I was only half aware of it. It wasn’t until another one exploded through the air that I pulled my hands from my face. In the distance, a fireball lit up the sky. Above it there was a mass of dark clouds, just like the ones over my head right now. The little bit of sunlight that was still able to penetrate the darkness glinted off cars as they went flying, and a few seconds later another explosion sounded to my right, and then another to my left, and another behind me until it felt as if I had been sucked into a war movie.
I knew I wasn’t safe where I was, but I couldn’t bring myself to care or leave. The sobs shaking my body were too violent, too devastating. It felt as if I would explode just as the mall had, and I couldn’t find it in me to care. Not even a little.
It wasn’t until I squeezed my hands into fists that I realized I was holding something. I looked down and blinked, but I had to force my fingers to relax so I could open my hand. The little purple flowers on the onesie felt like knives in my chest, and in that moment I knew I would never be the same.
Chapter Two
Five years later…
Daisy had her hand behind her back when she slipped into the room and plopped down next to me. A puff of dust floated into the air and the cot groaned under the extra weight, but I knew from experience that it would hold. This wasn’t the first time Daisy had dropped onto my bed like she owned the place.
“Guess what I have.” She was grinning from ear to ear, which wasn’t anything new.
“Herpes?” I arched my eyebrows knowingly.
Last week she’d crawled into bed with a guy who’d been out with his platoon for nearly two months. I’d tried to tell her it was a bad idea, condoms were hard if not impossible to get these days, and I knew what those people did during their down time. She never listened to me though, and that day had been no exception.
She rolled her brown eyes but her smile didn’t fade. “Of course not.”
“What then?”
The room was dark, lit only by the small flame flickering in the corner, but even in the limited light I was struck by how greasy her blond hair was. Not that mine was any better. Last night before I’d gone to bed I’d reworked my braid, weaving the tendrils together so they’d stay out of my face. The stiffness of my hair would have made me cringe if I wasn’t used to it by now. At least I didn’t have to worry about the braid coming loose, and at least we got the opportunity to freshen up between showers. These days you had to be thankful for small favors, and in the light of everything going on, being able to wash my hair every couple weeks was a big one.
Daisy whipped her hand out from behind her back so fast that I jerked away. I was afraid that in her enthusiasm she might accidentally slam whatever she was holding into my face. It was a bottle, but I had to squint before I could make out the words on the label.
“Champagne?” I lifted my eyebrows even higher when I met her gaze.
Daisy nodded enthusiastically. “David, the guy you told me not to sleep with, had it. He found it a few weeks ago in the rubble of some building and decided to give it to me.” She lifted her chin at the last word, posing for a moment before laughing. “I figured today was a good day to open it.”
My stomach dropped as she ripped the foil off and began to untwist the metal that helped keep the cork in place. Was it June seventh already? No. It couldn’t be.
Mentally I tried to tabulate the date, but it was impossible. I never knew what day it was until something big popped up, and June seventh was the one date I always tried to avoid, and the one no one ever let me forget. It snuck up like a burglar trying to rid me of every valuable thing I owned. Why anyone bothered to keep track of it I didn’t know, but they did. It was like a celebration around here, although for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why.
“Five years ago today I had just gotten home from my sophomore year of college.” Daisy tossed the metal and foil aside but didn’t pop the cork. Instead she placed the bottle on the cot between us while she recounted what might have been the last normal day of our lives. “I hadn’t even unpacked my car and my mom was already hounding me about a summer job. That night I met up with a few friends from high school and we went down to the lake.” She paused just like she always did when she got to this part of the story. “We talked about going to a movie the next afternoon, but I drank too much and overslept. They went without me…”
The sentence trailed off, the words left unsaid but not unknown. If she had gone to a movie she would have died along with her friends. I knew because I’d heard this story before, at least a dozen times, but also because I’d been there, at the mall where the movie theater had been. Or in the parking lot, anyway. Not that I’d ever admitted that to my friend.
Daisy exhaled and popped the cork. It went flying, hitting the ceiling above us and making her laugh. She shook her head before putting the bottle to her lips and sucking a mouthful of champagne down, but I never said a word and I didn’t crack a smile. She acted like she didn’t notice, but I knew she did. She’d given up asking me about that day years ago.
In the beginning, back in the early days when we’d first met, Daisy had tried over and over again to learn what I�
�d been up to when it all happened. Who I’d been and if I’d had family. But I’d refused. Five years later the pain hadn’t dulled and I still found the past impossible to talk about, so I didn’t. Not with Daisy, who was probably the closest friend I’d ever had, and not with anyone else.
She held the bottle out to me. “Five years.”
I took it. “Five years.”
The first swig was too big and I almost choked on the bubbles. I’d forgotten what it was like to drink carbonated beverages, how it tickled your sinuses if you weren’t careful, how if you took too big of a drink it felt like you were swallowing air. My second drink was smaller and easier to get down. Even though the alcohol was warm, it was good. Dry but surprisingly smooth.
Daisy and I drank in silence, passing the bottle back and forth in the darkness of my room. Already I was feeling a buzz. I had only been up for a few hours and I knew it wasn’t even noon yet, not that I felt bad about getting drunk this early in the day. I hadn’t been drunk in more than six years, and that had been the night Cassidy was conceived. The night that Michael, the love of my life, had come home from his freshman year of college telling me how much he missed me, and how he didn’t want to go back. We’d sipped beers down by the river and then made love on a blanket. Three weeks later I’d found out I was pregnant and our whole lives had changed.
“I miss electricity,” Daisy said after a while.
I nodded, still thinking about Michael and Cassidy.
“I miss hamburgers,” she said next.
I nodded again, trying to conjure up an image of their faces and falling short. It had been close to a year since I’d been certain that the pictures in my head were real. At this point, I was pretty sure the Cassidy I remembered was a combination of my baby and all the other babies I’d seen on the covers of old magazines since then. I couldn’t figure out if the way her hair had curled at the base of her neck had been real or something I’d imagined, or if she’d actually had a dimple in her right cheek.
For some reason, Michael was even harder to picture.
Daisy watched me as she took another drink, her brown eyes narrow and as sharp as darts. When she set the bottle down, she sighed. “You have nothing to say?”
I shrugged.
“Shit, Diana,” she spit out. “You never tell me anything.”
I couldn’t hold onto my indifference, and I suddenly found myself shrinking away under my friend’s annoyance. Daisy had never raised her voice to me before, had never tried to push me to share anything. I wanted to tell myself that she was being unfair, but deep down I knew it wasn’t true. She had a right to be pissed. I knew everything about Daisy’s past, from what street she’d grown up on to how old she’d been when she lost her virginity, as well as who it was with. Stewart Townsend, who had a name that made him sound like he should be the captain of the chess team, but who’d had a body like a Greek God. At least according to Daisy.
“Look—” She set the bottle between us. “—I know you lost something big, much bigger than what I lost, and I get that it’s hard, but it’s been five years and things are never going to get better unless you deal with it. You have to let the blood dry sometime.”
I looked down at my left hand, at the cheap ring I still wore on my finger. It was scratched and dented now, but I hadn’t taken it off once in the last five years. I didn’t plan to either.
“I just can’t bring myself to say the words,” I said, twisting the silver band on my finger.
Daisy scooped the bottle back up and nudged my arm with it. “If you drink enough, maybe you will.”
I took it, but deep down I knew there wasn’t enough champagne left in the bottle, maybe even in the whole world, to ease this pain. I was convinced that people who used to drink to feel better had either been fooling themselves or were a lot less heartbroken than I was. It was impossible to know for sure though, since every drunk who survived the invasion had long ago gone through detox. The only thing people did in excess these days was sleep.
I took a swig of the champagne before offering it to Daisy again, this time forcing myself to meet her gaze. “If I was going to tell anyone it would be you. You know that, right?”
She took the bottle from me. “I know, and I’m not trying to force you into doing anything you don’t want to. I’m just worried about you.”
Maybe she had a reason to be.
I wasn’t feeling any more talkative when we’d finished the bottle, even if my brain did feel like it was floating above my head. The alcohol content on the label said twelve percent, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered if it had been six percent. Between our rations being low and my body being unused to drinking, I probably could have gotten drunk off one sip.
The room actually swayed when I stood.
“Thank God I don’t have patrol for another six hours,” I said, grabbing the wall for support.
Daisy giggled. It was the first time I’d ever heard her make such a girly sound. “I’m on in two.”
“Daisy,” I said, shaking my head.
She only shrugged. “I guess we should get some coffee?”
“If there is any.”
Not that the stuff we called coffee could have passed for the liquid five years ago. It was too weak and tasted burnt most of the time since we had to cook it over a fire, but it was all we had. When we had it, which was getting more and more uncommon with each passing day. We all knew that it wouldn’t be long before things like coffee and chocolate became extinct, and even though the idea of the old world slipping away got to me sometimes, I tried to instead focus on the fact that I was still alive and kicking.
Daisy headed for the door and I followed, pausing just long enough to blow out the small wick I had burning on the way by. It was just a piece of cloth in a bowl of animal fat, and only really bright enough to keep me from tripping or slamming into furniture, but I’d almost gotten used to the dim light after all these years. Whenever I did go outside during the day I felt like a vampire stepping out into the sun for the first time. The kind that burst into flames, not the kind that sparkled. Not that sunshine existed anymore, but it still felt bright outside compared to the darkness of the building.
The hallway was as dim as my room had been. Lanterns hung from the ceiling every ten feet or so, giving off just enough light to help you get where you were going in one piece, but not enough to really let you see much of anything. The building we lived in had once housed a different office on each floor. A law firm on one and an architectural firm on another, to name a couple. This floor had belonged to an advertising agency and was cut up into more than a dozen small offices with a larger open area in the center. Not that it was open now. Dividers had long ago been set up to give people their own private space, and in some areas desks had even been stacked on top of one another to form walls. I’d gotten lucky and snagged a back office that only had one window, which was now covered by boards, so I had a door on my room. Some of the living spaces I passed had nothing more than a sheet hanging across the opening or literally no privacy at all. Daisy lived one floor up in what I was pretty sure was a maintenance closet. Not that it mattered to her how big it was. There was enough room for her cot and a few shelves to stack her things on. These days that was the most a person needed.
“Another platoon is coming in today,” she said as we squeezed our way down the tiny hall that had been created in the formerly open room.
We passed an open doorway and I spied someone stretched out on a thin mattress, trying to grab some sleep despite the noise radiating through the room. It was too dark to see who it was, but I had no doubt that he or she had gotten off patrol and was so tired sleep wouldn’t be an issue. I’d been there dozens of times.
“Where are they coming from this time?” I asked Daisy.
“Not sure. I heard Parker on the radio as I was headed up to see you.” She grinned and I knew what was coming before she said it. “I get first dibs.”
I rolled my eyes because she always
said this even though it was never necessary. Five years after I’d watched my husband and daughter get blown up, I still hadn’t slept with anyone else. I couldn’t even imagine it. Couldn’t stomach the idea of letting someone else touch me, of kissing anyone other than Michael. I didn’t know how to heal, but I was certain climbing into bed with a new man wasn’t the way.
“You’re going to get pregnant.”
“We’re careful.”
Daisy passed under a lantern just as she wiggled her eyebrows in my direction, but I didn’t ask. I may have known almost everything about her, but that didn’t mean I needed to hear the intimate details of her sex life.
We reached the end of the hall and ducked into the stairwell. It boomed with the echo of footsteps, making it impossible to talk, which I was more than grateful for. Daisy was ahead of me, keeping to the right as we made our way down so we didn’t bump into anyone going up. The lanterns in here were on every other landing, but the light barely carried and everyone knew to keep to the right.
The sound of children crying and laughing and playing grew as we neared the floor below mine, and just like every other time I heard the noise, my stomach tightened. We kept the families with kids together, housed above the home guard headquarters on the first floor, but close to the exit in case we needed to make a quick escape. It hadn’t been an issue yet and I’d been here for over four years, but it was protocol and we clung to protocol like a man thrown overboard clinging to a life raft. It kept us alive.
I moved faster, hoping to flee the sound even though I knew I might bump into Daisy. I did of course, and she swore but didn’t complain. She wasn’t a moron. We’d changed in front of one another more times than I could count and I knew she’d seen my C-section scar, knew she had a pretty good idea what I’d lost that day five years ago. She was my friend though, and despite her little outburst in my room less than fifteen minutes earlier, she was going to be there for me whether or not I chose to open up to her. Which made me love her more than anyone else still alive.
