by J. D. Palmer
I am getting a sense for these things. A worrisome thought. No one should have to do this more than once. Everyone should do it all the time, especially now.
“Just tell her.”
He doesn’t say anything so much as wave his hand at her, his expression so perplexed it almost seems cartoonish.
The passenger door opens and Beryl swings her gun. A pretty, petite black girl of about the same age as the boy steps out. She moves awkwardly, hunched, and it’s only when she steps around the door that we see that she is pregnant.
I relax, and Beryl lowers her gun to her side. We look at each other and she gives a nod, a small curl of a smile reserved for the side of her mouth that’s facing me. We are the danger, it says. For us, for her and me, we cannot help but be cautious. Fearful. Wary to the point of being offensive. But whatever broke us down to that level honed our instincts as well. Tigers encountering a gazelle in a clearing are only cautious until they know it’s indeed a gazelle.
“We don’t have anything. But if you want to look around inside, be my guest.”
He moves aside as if waiting for Beryl or I to step in and sweep the vehicle for goods.
“We don’t want anything.”
The man’s face crumples into a mask of confusion.
“Then what’s going on?”
What is going on?
I wonder what these two have been doing since the downfall. They aren’t as cautious as us. They don’t seem to be armed. I guess, in a world of chaos, some of us see the depths of darkness. Others would have it much easier. Much, much, easier.
I turn and almost wave the others forward before remembering that Sheila is waiting for me to do just that. And then she’d blow this poor guy’s head off. I make a thumbs up at my chest and trust them to understand. Sure enough, Sheila makes a show of getting off the car and the others walk towards us.
The man is still worried. Still unsure.
As he ought to be.
“We haven’t done anything wrong.” The girl speaks, both hands cradling her stomach. She slouches down and lowers her chin to her chest, big eyes looking up at me and a lip quivering. She has perfected the art of pouting. Put-out. Saddened by the actions of those around her. Probably has gotten whatever she’s wanted her entire life.
No wonder she’s pregnant.
“We aren’t going to hurt you. We’re just cautious.”
The guy huffs, pride hurt. “Seems a bit excessive. Especially pointing a gun at a pregnant woman.”
“Sorry.” I say it and don’t mean it, and I’m pretty sure everyone there can hear I don’t mean it, too. Footsteps behind me as the others join us. Theo is trying to muffle his coughs, as if embarrassed to be sick in front of strangers.
“Ah shit, ya got knocked up? That sucks.” Sheila slowly saunters past everyone, eyes raking both the boy and girl. She leans into their car and turns off the engine. “He’s good looking enough but still… Going to be rough without a shit ton of drugs and a doctor.”
The girl abandons her pouting, casting Sheila a glare as she comes to stand by me. “No shit.”
Sheila smiles at the words, relaxing even more now that there is conflict. Pregnant or not, I think Sheila will put the girl in her place. I do my best to cut her off before it can escalate.
“Where are you heading?”
The young man gives me a shrug, smiling now that there are no guns pointed at his face. “Anywhere, man. Anywhere.” He gestures broadly. “Just getting out of town. Callie has never seen the ocean, and now with all this we figured we’d find a nice mansion on a beach somewhere.”
I can’t help the grunt that comes out of my mouth. His enthusiasm, and naïveté, hit me like a punch to the gut. Though I wonder if the scorn I feel isn’t tinged with a little jealousy.
“How old are you?”
He squints at me, sensing the harsh appraisal.
“Nineteen.”
A few years and change separate us. But I feel ancient compared to this child standing in front of me. Clear skin unblemished by scars. Eyes that look at the world with hope and innocence.
I pity him. I hope he doesn’t learn the hard way.
“So…” He awkwardly starts to say. I realize that I have let the silence stretch as we all examine this specimen of a man, the last remnant of a world fast fading away.
“So… We cool? You guys want to chat for a bit? We have some water bottles in the trunk. Some food… Maybe we can share?”
“Yes, fuck.” Theo says. Then he sits down on the pavement and covers his eyes with his hands.
Okay.
I nod and Josey jogs back to bring the car up. We pass out Snickers bars, and they give water, and we sit on the hoods of our cars or in the road, the only life in the middle of a deserted desert.
Introductions are made. The young man says his name is Derek. The girl, now coquettish, says her name is Callie.
“You guys know what happened? How everything…” Derek makes a broad gesture in the air.
“Something with our blood, I guess. We’re all AB.”
His eyes raise and he looks to the girl. “Are you AB?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re all talking about.”
He swings his gaze back to me. “I know I am. Holy shit. We thought it was a bird flu or something. Anything else?”
I think back on my talks with Mickey. The guesses, the surmises, everyone jumping to a conclusion that will allow them to continue to operate on this planet. Or to have hope.
“Not a clue.”
Sheila swigs from a bottle of whiskey fast disappearing. She sits next to the young man and does her best to antagonize the pregnant girl. It doesn’t look hard.
“So you get knocked up before, or after?” she slurs. The girl casts her a dark look before answering.
“Before.”
“Ah, shit, I suppose that makes sense. It wouldn’t be something you’d want now, huh?”
Uncomfortable looks between everyone. Beryl glances at me, knowing what I’m thinking about.
“How far along are you?” Josey asks.
“I’m not sure. Six months we think. We’ve been keeping track on a calendar but we might be a week off.”
“You know what month it is?” I blurt, startled from my revery.
The man shrugs. “Mid September-ish.”
Holy shit… So much time gone. Jessica is due around November fifth. That gives me a month, maybe more, to get back.
“So you guys just decided to head south, have some sort of honeymoon before the little shit gets here?” There’s something beyond antagonistic in Sheila’s eyes, her voice, this time. Who knows what talk took place between her and Mickey in the small hours of the night, coiled in the sheets together. Maybe she sees something of that dream in them. Maybe she sees the injustice of it all.
The man either ignores her attitude or is unaware. He gives another rueful smile to everyone. “Yeah, don’t want to be worrying about a baby in the winter, you know?”
Everyone looks at me, quick glances and then to the ground. It’s okay. It’s not something I haven’t thought about. Or obsessed about. Or had nightmares about.
“Where are you coming from?”
“Uh…” He gets a worried look on his face. I was up by, uh, Elko… You know where that is?” We all shake our heads and he nods, expecting the answer. “No one does. I ran into Callie around Winnemucca.”
Silence for a second as we all think on what he said.
“Wait,” Sheila drawls, “you found her? So you aren’t the baby daddy?”
He shakes his head, sharing a glance with Callie. “I’m not. But I’m prepared to take care of it.” He puffs out his chest as he talks. Even though, at least to me, “take care of it,” feels off. More like he was willing to dispose of something.
Perhaps I’ve grown too morbid, too trapped in my own world of distrust.
“Where are you all coming from?” He beams around the circle at us, genuinely ex
cited to hear our stories.
“California.”
Josey says it, and that’s all that is said.
Nothing but the desert wind on the highway, the swoosh of tumbleweed as they make their scramble across the road. A screech of a bird.
“Should we not go that way?”
He says it with such concern, such innocence, that Sheila barks a laugh. I don’t know what to tell him. Should I be that person who says hunker down, the world is a dark, dreary place full of monsters and nuclear weapons? Should I give him a warning? Should I just let the man go and find out on his own?
“I wouldn’t” I say, and it sounds sad and secretive and almost, just almost, like a threat. I don’t know why I can’t just come out and say it. Tell him, them, just why California might not be their best bet. My first instinct, my first shield, is to say I’m protecting Sheila from having to relive the disaster at San Francisco. That I’m protecting Beryl from reliving the jump from the bridge. Theo’s killing. Josey’s torture.
If I’m being real with myself, and I force myself to do this, I know I’m protecting them from seeing the real us. In the face of their innocence, well, it’s damn hard not to feel like a pack of savages.
“You’re not the only ones who’ve had a hard time, you know.” Callie says it, and she adds a sniffle, though the desert air can’t possibly have given her nose any moisture. She does it anyways. “We’ve all had it rough.”
I think we are too stunned, at first, to offer any response. I know our answers have been short, clipped, implying hardship. But we aren’t looking for pity. Or, gods forbid, a comparison of trials. That she thinks we are on par with each other…. That is shocking.
“How have you had it rough?” Sheila says, and if I were a betting man I’d wager that more than one life was on the line with her answer. A rustle goes through our group, unnoticed by Derek. A small ripple of movement that brings Theo’s head up and deepens the crease between Josey’s eyes. Beryl has moved to her spot just over my left shoulder.
Fuck.
This isn’t worth it. But it is. It should be. Whatever she says had better not be a spit on the graves of our lost.
“We don’t need to hear your story,” I say. “Nor do you need to hear ours—”
“Let her speak.” Sheila says. She doesn’t have her gun. She doesn’t have any weapon on her, at least as far as I know. And it would be hard to conceal a weapon in the little that she wears. But her right hand, the one wrapped in bandages, has a slow brick blush oozing across her clenched knuckles. She seems relaxed, but her calves are flexed and her eyes are bright, and she is sitting upon the hood of our car more like a falcon about to take flight than someone interested in hearing a tale.
Callie is on the wrong wave length. She takes it as a sign of feminine approval. She bats her eyes at me, and at Josey. She even spares a brief glance for the formidable, though shrunken, figure of Theo. She is the kind of girl that has worked two highways in her life; that of pity and that of sexuality. If she can’t woo you, she will make you feel sorry for her. It will buy her clothes and will get her attention. I doubt she’s old enough to see anything beyond that.
I wonder if Derek sees it. Or maybe he is simply the victim of a creature both predator and parasite.
“Tell it. Tell us how you have had it so rough.”
Sheila is ruthless and sounding absurdly sober. I look at Beryl, wondering how she feels. Her eyes are on Callie. Curious. Distant. She ignores me.
“I was in a hotel. A high rise. We were on the tenth floor. And I was set to meet the… the father. We had plans for a… it was going to be a weekend date.”
She takes a deep breath and snatches a glance at Derek. He’s trying to be aloof, to pretend that this story doesn’t matter.
Our instincts are too honed not to see the tension.
“He never came. And I was all alone. Just me and Benny. My dog.”
She takes a deep, dramatic breath, letting us know that this is where the story got hard.
“I waited. So long. And we raided vending machines. And we made an SOS with pillows on the roof. But there was no one.” She looks at us as if being alone was a rare disease, rarely contracted and never cured. “There was no one. We ran out of food. Benny…”
She looks at each of our faces. I think, perhaps, that she has told this story before and received much more empathy. Sympathy for her plight. She doesn’t know how to interpret our silence. And whether it’s the blank look in our eyes or the lack of reaction, it forces her to blurt out the rest of the story in a rush before bursting into sobs.
“I ate him. I ate Benny. I had to.”
The most unsettling part of all this isn’t her crying. It isn’t Derek moving in to comfort her. It isn’t the rest of us sitting in silence, full of judgement.
It’s Sheila’s laugh.
She laughs and her eyes never leave Callie’s face.
“You gotta be fuckin’ with me. That’s it? You dumb fucking twat!”
And she laughs some more. Callie is weeping and huddles up next to Derek, who seems too shocked by Sheila’s reaction to do anything.
This isn’t something I want to let continue. But I’m tired. Exhausted by the drama. And not tempted to temper our insensitivity in the face of theirs. No one looking at us should be able to trot out that story and think we will commiserate.
“Why are you laughing?” Callie asks through her tears. “Why are you being so cruel?”
Sheila abruptly jumps to her feet, all serious now.
“You want to know what having it rough means? Do you?”
Callie shrinks back from her, arms cradling her swollen belly in fear.
“Enough,” I say, but Sheila pretends not to hear.
“I could tell you stories. But maybe I just show you. Maybe we take you and your—”
“Enough!” I bark. And Sheila swings around on me. She is about to ride her wave of anger and pour out some of the vitriol on me. But she sees my face. And Beryl’s. And Josey’s. And I suppose there is enough of our own anger, and sadness, and disgust, and envy there to douse the fire. For a moment.
She walks to the car and grabs her whiskey, taking a deep pull before turning back to the couple. She gives a long hard look at Derek.
“Get rid of her. You’re both pathetic, but if you stay with her you’ll die.”
And with that she storms off down the road. Josey hops up and runs after her.
“I don’t understand,” Callie whispers. “I don’t understand why everyone is so cruel. Why isn’t anyone fixing this?” Her eyes swing up to mine, beseeching. “Why are people not helping each other?”
I don’t know.
Maybe the dust has to settle before we can pretend to be civilized again. Or maybe it’s just that virtue means something different, now. A harder edge. A helping hand laced with callouses.
For now.
I think we’ve all gone a little crazy. Guilt, anger, frustration. Mourning more in a day than you have in the entirety of your life before the downfall. We’ve all changed, and I guess this new side of people makes sense to me. One day, perhaps, we’ll be more concerned about helping each other. I hope time is all it takes. I wonder if John would agree.
I sip water and listen to the quiet crying of Callie and the soft shushing of Derek as he cradles her head. I don’t know if, like Sheila says, he will survive. But he holds Callie’s hand, and he does his best to fortify her, and I can’t help but look at Beryl. To see if she sees what I see. A vision of us only a million shades lighter.
Their relationship seems skewed. Their love, if it is indeed love, is borne of circumstances and the fear of being alone.
Beryl punches me in the shoulder.
“How is the road ahead?”
Derek shrugs, willing to bypass any explanation of Sheila’s behavior.
“Nothing going on back the way we came. But when I left Elko there was a lot of smoke. Seems like some of Idaho is on fire.”
“F
orest fire?”
He shakes his head. “No idea.”
He seems odd. A bad poker face, I think. I’m not going to press him. Hell, he might lie. And it’s not like we’ve been forthcoming.
But he decides to tell me anyways.
“There’s a group. Up north. Led by a guy called the Crook’d Man. He’s got a following. He says he knows what happened. Says he knows why.” He stops there and doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Who does he say is responsible?”
He shakes his head again. “Isn’t one person or group. He has trials. It’s… Another reason we are heading south.”
After that it’s mostly silent. Moments passed in the company of others not because there is a comfort in their proximity. Rather an importance in this new world to impart something with each other before drifting along, even if I don’t know what that is. So we sit, and wait, and simply breathe together.
The air is cool, the wind picking up and tossing Beryl’s hair around her face, though she doesn’t seem to notice. The sky is blue. A pure blue. If I had to name it, I’d say it was the first blue.
“I know, or at least I think I know, that I’ve had it easy.”
Not the words I’d thought to hear.
“But we are choosing to try to be happy.”
That’s all he says. And as much as I’ve judged these two, perhaps wrongly, perhaps harshly… I see the wisdom in his words. And that’s when I know it’s time to go. We part ways with awkward handshakes.
Three miles down the road we pick up Josey and Sheila. The drive is now subdued. There is still that thought, that idea attached to the downfall, that has wormed its way into our minds… We think that those of us who survived, those alive… We think that we are important. And we think that those that we meet will also carry importance. I don’t know if it was easier to deal with shitty people when there were more of them, but meeting people who simply seem too inane to be around brings about a depression. Perhaps we thought, even with the blood thing, that those of us alive would be… a good showing.
Josey tries to ease the mood, as is his way. I always wondered how a man as ethical as him had been able to stay on the periphery at Camelot. Now I get it. He hates conflict. He’s a peacemaker. Even when he pretended to want to soldier with Mickey, it was from a romanticized view of bringing peace to the world.
