by Mike Kilroy
“I know.”
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Solo looked up at the principal, at his bushy moustache and his mullet and his mutton-chop sideburns and his wide shirt collars poking out over the lapel of his corduroy jacket. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Solo caught the sight of Eye Lyds standing outside, peering through the principal’s office window at him. Her stark black hair was pulled back from her face with a ladybug hair clip and there was a frown on her sallow face.
She was scared for him.
The principal’s office door opened, and Eye Lyds ducked away. Solo’s mother and father entered. He knew it was them by their labored sighs of disapproval and frustration. He didn’t want to look at them, but knew they were ashamed.
His mother knelt and squeezed Solo’s face with both hands near his ears. She shook his head a little and made him look at her.
“What are we going to do with you?”
Solo tried to look away, but his mother squeezed his face tighter. “Why can’t you be more like her?”
***
The amount of pink was startling as Solo pried his eyes open in the light of morning.
Sunlight filtered into the room and lit up every shred of pink, from the walls to the curtains to the stuffed animals, to the throw rug to the blanket to the fuzzy dice that hung over the corner of the bed post.
It’s as if a Pepto-Bismol bottle had exploded.
He reached into his bag and pulled out the giant bottle of pills, shook one out into his hand and popped it into his mouth. He swallowed it down roughly.
Solo peered around for Tom, but could not see him.
He’ll be back. He’s probably out scrounging for food and supplies.
Solo threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood, stretching his arms and back. It felt good to sleep in a bed again, especially one as soft as this. Tom was right to bring them here.
He walked over to a desk and blew a thick film of dust off a notebook—pink, of course—and flipped it open. Written in swirly cursive as only a girl could produce were words containing great emotion, great feeling, great power. This girl had a way with words, but as Solo read on, he noticed a change in the tone of this makeshift diary and the words that had just moments ago made him smile, now made him frown and furl his brow with surprise and curiosity.
There is no God. There can’t be. There just can’t be.
I look around at all the people, dead looks in their eyes, plodding along like zombies, and I can’t help but think the apocalypse is near. I hope so, because I can’t fucking live like this anymore. I can’t live in a world with so many uncaring, unfeeling people.
If there were a God, He wouldn’t let this continue. If there were a God, he’d smite the shit out of everyone or something.
Solo flipped through a few more pages and read further.
Maybe there is a God after all. That asshole neighbor who tries to peep into my room at me with his binoculars disappeared a few days ago. No one has seen him. He’s just gone. Vanished. He isn’t the only one. Others have gone missing.
Maybe God is smiting them after all. Yeah.
Solo closed the notebook and sighed. He traced the metal spiral of the binding with his finger and wondered what had happened to the girl.
And to the world.
Before he could ponder such things further, he heard a crash and the sounds of rummaging coming from downstairs. Then he heard the clumping strides of boots up the hardwood stairs.
Tom burst into the room. “Get your ass down here!”
Solo raced down the stairs and into the living room. Standing in front of him was a small dog, black as coal with splotches of white around the paws and scruff. Her mouth dropped open in a pant.
There was no foam spilling from her jowls. She looked kind and happy. Solo reached his hand out toward her and she hesitantly approached.
“What are you doing?” Tom barked. “She could bite your hand off for all you know.”
Solo pulled his hand back, pondering Tom’s warning, but then reached for the pup again. He needed to have trust in something other than Tom, more now than ever.
The dog approached, pressed her head into his hand, and closed her eyes. Solo scratched her behind the ears.
“See, Tom. We’ve made a new friend.”
“Another fucking mouth to feed.”
“Oh, Tom, she’s small. She can’t eat much. She’s healthy. We’ll take her with us.”
He needed a name for his new friend. He thought about Chewy, but thought that cliché. He thought about Deeogee, but thought that rather lame, too.
He decided on Uno.
She was like him—alone and on her own. The name fit.
“The Adventures of Solo, Uno and Tom.” Three best friends trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Sounds like a hit television show.
“Keep that mutt away from me.”
“Okay, Tom.”
Uno licked at Solo’s face.
For a moment, Solo had forgotten his predicament. For a moment things were almost normal.
Almost.
***
The cat, its insides spilling out, lay on the workbench. A bloody, serrated knife sat next to the carcass.
Solo was unmoved by the site. That bothered him. He felt no remorse for the feline. His heart pounded, sure, but not from the grisly scene before him.
But because he was afraid of getting caught.
He heard loud, clumping footsteps coming down the stairs into the basement. He knew who they belonged to.
It was too late now.
“What the hell?” His father bellowed, seeing the cat and Solo staring at it. “Jesus Christ!”
Solo peered at his father, whose face looked so old, wrinkles running across his forehead and cheeks like canals, crow’s feet so raised they distorted his eye lids. His arms once thick under the flannel shirts he always wore, the sleeves rolled up, were thin, the skin hanging off of them.
He looked so frail.
And afraid. Of him.
His father feared him. Solo once feared his father, too. There could be nothing worse.
“I’m sorry. I was just curious. I still don’t know why she was sick.”
“You don’t do that to another animal! You’re old enough now to know better. What’s wrong with you?”
“I—” Solo found it pointless to continue. Nothing he could say would fix this. Nothing he could do could allay his father’s fear.
“You’re …” his father said, his lips trembling. “You’re a monster.”
Solo slapped at his head, softly and then with more and more force. He sobbed and clenched his jaw. He felt his face flush.
He just wanted it to be over.
He just wanted it to stop.
He just wanted everything to go away.
***
Solo wiped away a stray tear from his cheek at that memory and he and Tom headed out again, their feet beating down the road that lead to somewhere.
There was nothing around them but trees. Their leaves, brown and orange and red, blew and swirled in the wind. Uno sniffed as she followed, her little nose twitching at every new scent.
Solo threw her a piece of Twinkie and Uno swallowed it in one chomp. She probably had no idea what she had just eaten but was just happy for the attention and the gesture.
At least Tom seemed more pleasant. “It’s nice to get out of that city and into the fresh air.” He took a deep breath through his nose and his chest puffed out.
They didn’t know what they would find on that road ahead, stretching in front of them and sloping over hills and bending around curves, but it was a worthy endeavor to find out. For too long they had hid in that city, afraid of what they would find—or wouldn’t find—outside its limits. It was clear there was nothing inside it, the buildings serving as giant mausoleums marking a nearly dead race.
As they walked along, a million thoughts flooded Solo’s head, ponder
ings of why this happened? Could it be reversed? Is it even real? Is this hell? Is this purgatory? Is this just a wasteland? He slapped his head three times trying to get the cascade to stop.
He felt panic and dread. His vision began to blur and he felt light-headed. He hated these episodes, but could do little to thwart them.
“Don’t lose your shit on me now,” Tom said. “We have more walking to do.”
Solo took deep breaths—in through the nose, out through the mouth. He began to calm. The world began to settle.
Uno loped at Solo’s heals as they walked. She was so obedient and dutiful.
Solo never had a dog growing up. He never had pets after the incident. He remembered this was so because of his parents—they were afraid of what Solo would do to them.
“Carve up one cat as a kid and you get a reputation,” Solo mumbled and chuckled. He found no joy in it. He wasn’t a burgeoning serial killer. He was just curious. The cat was old and frail and slow. The cat was in its death throes. He was fat and his fur matted and he barely moved out of the shade cast by the thick weeds that grew nearly shoulder high in the abandoned lot near his home. He wanted to study its internal organs. He wanted to do a crude autopsy.
He wanted to understand.
The why. The how.
If that was wrong, then, Solo admitted he was wrong.
“I’m no serial killer,” Solo muttered into the dimming light.
“Jesus, Solo. You’re doing it again.”
Solo reached into his bag, grabbed the bottle and shook out another pill. He felt Tom’s beady eyes glaring at him.
He swallowed the pill anyway. Tom shook his head in disgust and kept moving, forward and onward, unrelenting and unforgiving.
Uno looked up at Solo and cocked her head.
Solo called out to Tom. “I’m exhausted and so is Uno. We should stop for the night.”
“Pussies,” Tom blustered as he halted his march, giving in to Solo and his fatigue. “Fine, Candy Ass. There’s a house right over there.”
Tom stomped off toward the home. Solo could barely see its outline in the rapidly deepening darkness. It had a porch that leaned to one side and the paint was peeling, but it looked like it was sturdy enough.
Inside smelled musty, the air heavy. Dust covered everything and large spider webs draped every corner.
The stairs that lead to the second floor creaked loudly, whining with each of Solo’s tired steps. At the top of the stairs was a narrow hallway with doors on each side. Solo swung the first one open and smelled the foulness right away.
He closed the door before Uno could bolt through. “You don’t wanna go in there, girl.”
The skeleton of a dead dog lay on the bed. The canine probably tried to escape after the food had run out, but couldn’t. Instead it kept vigil on the bed that was most likely its owner’s until it died.
Solo opened the door across the hall and was relieved to find no dead pets—and no Pepto-Bismol pink—inside.
Tom burst into the room, gazing around at his new surroundings with a tilted smile. “This will work.”
***
Uno lay on Solo’s legs, her chest heaving with each breath. Her ears twitched and her paws started moving as if she were digging.
“Keep that mutt still.” Tom was such a grouch. He slept on the floor like he always did.
“She’s not hurting anyone.”
“I’m gonna hurt her if she doesn’t stop twitching.”
“No, you won’t.”
“I’ll open up her gut and look at her organs.”
Solo frowned and stared at Tom through slit, angry eyes. Tom took notice of this and offered a weak apology. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m tired. It was a long day and tomorrow will be longer. Maybe tomorrow will be better.”
It never was.
It was rarely worse, but it also was rarely better.
It was just there. Every day like the last.
Solo closed his eyes and thought of Eye Lyds again. He smiled as he fell asleep to the sound of soft snores from Uno.
***
Solo heard the whispers and the giggles. He saw them pointing and mocking. He heard what they called him.
Crazy.
Weird.
A loser.
Every once in awhile he was pelted by a spit ball, rolled up and ejected at great speed from a straw. It was a projectile that delivered him his fate: to be alone, shunned and ridiculed.
Solo swung his eyes away from the boorish classmates, football players and basketball players and wrestlers, and set them on Eye Lyds across the lunchroom. She sat with a brood of other girls who wore the same ribbons in their hair and laughed at the same jokes and worshiped the same bands.
Eye Lyds fit in well. It was a gift. She was pretty—stunning really—with those pouty lips that were crimson and her big, flirty eyes. She said all the right things. She acted the right way. She laughed at the right times. She was aghast when her friends expected her to be aghast.
Solo wondered how she did it.
She sat there now, nibbling on her pizza burger, and locked her eyes on Solo’s. She watched as another spit ball pelted him in the face.
He ignored it.
She could not, it seemed.
Eye Lyds pushed herself away from the lunch table angrily and stomped toward the table with the football players and the basketball players and the wrestlers. Her heels—she loved to wear high heels—clacked on the gray tile.
She peeked at Solo out of the corner of her eyes as she marched. Solo shook his head, but she didn’t stop.
“Whatcha doin?” she said as she reached the table, the pitch high and flirty as she wedged herself between the quarterback and the point guard.
“Just having fun,” one of the boys said.
“Oh, yeah? I like to have fun, too.” She grabbed the straw and put it in her mouth, blowing air through it onto the wrestler’s face.
He grinned and leaned forward. “I bet you are good at blowing other stuff.”
“You know what I’m better at?” She purred.
The wrestler inched even closer. “What?”
Eye Lyds didn’t answer. Instead she jammed the straw into his eye. He quickly grabbed at his face and moaned, falling backward and off his chair.
The others at the table stood and looked down at the wrestler, who was writhing in pain. A hush fell over the lunchroom, only the wrestler’s cries cutting through the silence.
Eye Lyds stood over the wrestler, staring down at him as her chest heaved. “Leave him the fuck alone!” she bellowed.
She peered at Solo again, her lips quivering, her eyes big.
Solo simply mouthed, “No. You shouldn’t have done that.”
***
Uno licked at Solo’s face, which made him giggle.
“Good morning, pretty girl,” Solo said, rubbing Uno under the chin. “Are you ready for another adventure today?”
Tom was. He was already gone. Probably off scouting their position and figuring out the next, best path for them to take. They were heading for the next city, a new town to plunder.
Solo hoped to find people. Tom didn’t. Tom told horror stories of what the few people who remained were like in the After.
“They’re fucking heartless,” Tom would say. “They’ll lie, kill and steal. They’re just as likely to spit in your face as they are to feed ya. So, yeah, at least that hasn’t changed.”
Solo missed people. That was an odd admission because he loathed them in the Before. But, oh, what I wouldn’t do to see a pretty face in the After.
Uno raced down the stairs as Solo trailed behind. Tom stood near the front door, his arms crossed on his chest. “About time you woke up, sleeping beauty.”
Solo smiled and waved a dismissive hand at Tom. “Where we heading today, Mr. Navigator?”
“North.”
“North?”
“Yeah,” Tom said, his arms still crossed on his thick chest snug under that thick, flannel shirt like
the one Solo’s father used to wear. “North.”
***
Their pace was extraordinary. Solo figured an average human can walk about three miles per hour, and that is on flat terrain. The terrain they were traversing was hilly. Solo estimated they were walking about four or five miles per hour, which allowed them to cover fifty miles in roughly twelve hours.
Tom wanted to make it to the lake by nightfall. Solo did the math in his head and figured that was do-able.
Tom walked briskly and Uno seemed to be able to move her little legs forever. Solo, though, felt his legs begin to ache and cramp.
“You’re not drinking enough water,” Tom snarled. “You have to drink more water.”
He was right. Solo was giving more of his water to Uno and was drinking less.
Tom’s pace was only increasing. Solo was doing his best to keep up.
Finally Tom slowed. A city hung on the horizon, not as big as the one they left, but plenty big enough with tall buildings and four-lane highways. They walked down the middle of one of those highways; a battered, faded and worn sign that read “Interstate 79” twisted in a strong gale.
“We’re almost there.” Tom said, almost gleefully.
“What’s there? Why do you want to go there so badly?”
“Because I do.”
That was as good a reason as any.
Perhaps Tom had family there. Perhaps there was a long-lost love of his dwelling in that city, and Tom was on a mission to find her.
Perhaps under that surly exterior was a heart that ached for the love of his life.
That thought made Solo smile.
***
Solo straightened the napkin, placing it even with the edge of the table. He placed his plastic cup of water exactly in the center of the coaster and adjusted his tie so it was completely smooth over his shirt.
He got that look again, this one from Alexis, who fidgeted nervously across the table from him. He knew those looks well. He had seen them often.
“So, um, can I ask you a question?”
Solo chuckled. “You just did.”
Alexis giggled nervously and pushed a stray blond hair behind her ear. It was a lovely hair and a lovely ear, a perfect fit for the lovely creature she was. Solo couldn’t believe she was here with him.
“Well, yeah. I have another question.”
