Disappearance

by Trevor Zaple

  “No,” Olivia wailed, tears falling from her eyes. “We can take you, we can find someone. There must be a doctor, or some medical supplies, or…”

  “GO!” Emily said hoarsely. “There isn’t time. They’ll be here in minutes. Just, do…as I told you. Amber”.

  Amber came over and helped Olivia up. She then knelt down so that she could hear what Emily had to tell her.

  “Hey Em,” she said, as though they were simply old friends meeting for coffee. Emily smiled weakly.

  “Hey, Amber,” she returned the greeting quietly. “Remember what I told you, ok? Just string it along, and then blow it up. Bury us all. Do me one favor, though?”

  “Anything,” Amber breathed, her eyes full.

  “Leave me your knife”.

  Wordlessly, Amber unbuttoned her coat and reached into where her combat knife was strapped. She deftly undid the straps and slid it out. The razor-serrated blade glinted wickedly in the flashlight’s buzzing glare. She handed it handle-first to Emily, who took it and then set it on the ground in front of her.

  “I think…I’m just going to wait here,” Emily exhaled. “You should…all go”.

  They gathered around her awkwardly for a moment, and mumbled their goodbyes to her. Then, as the sound of the horde came further up the tunnel, they turned and began to make their way up the bridge toward the mall.

  Jason cowered by the edge of the platform, his entire body wracked with shaking and weeping. The crashing, chewing sound of the hungry mob echoed up the entrance to the station, filling his mind and erasing any sense of rationality. Nothing had happened as he had planned. His mind skipped back to the day he had tried to kill himself, and thought of the cold finality of the barrel against his temple. He remembered the heavy click of the chamber, and how nothing had come out. He brought up an image of his sister, and let out a hoarse, despairing scream. Sarah, he thought wildly, if there really is a hell, if that isn’t where I am right now, I will find you there, and I will torture you forever. You stupid, interfering whore. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you. This entire ordeal, all of it, is your fault. He wept harder, feeling sorrier for himself than he had at any other time in his life.

  The gun. He remembered it, lying on the ground by the whore with the thick brown hair. The whore he had shot. She was bleeding, dying, maybe dead. He could sneak over, get the gun. He knew that there were bullets in it this time, he had counted them personally as he had loaded them into the chamber. It would work, there was no reason that it wouldn’t. He could finally put that bore to his head, pull the trigger, and find peace. Let the cannibals eat his body afterward, he would be dead. Long gone. He smiled, vulpine in the shadows.

  He could hear them in the background. They were nearly at the mouth of the tunnel. Soon they would be pouring into the platform area, riding their last ounces of strength, their teeth chomping and their hands stretched out for his warm flesh. He would have to be quick. He crawled forward, supporting himself on the one hand, wincing whenever he stumbled and leaned onto his broken wrist. It would be painless soon, he told himself. Soon he would exist in a world without pain.

  He got up onto his feet and broke into a run. Time was running short. He tottered forward, and saw the dark shape of the whore’s body, lying on her stomach in the gloom. The gun would be near her, he remembered. Just near her outstretched form. He slowed down and inched his way towards her. She’s dead, the whore’s dead he told himself, but he felt an intense fear of her corpse. He forced himself to breathe. He just had to reach down, he could see the gun now, by her feet. He just had to reach down and take it.

  He knelt, his fingers reaching out to grab the dull grip of the pistol, and the whore’s corpse twitched. Her foot swept and made contact with the gun, which went skidding along into the darkness. He heard it clatter along and stop somewhere that he could not see. He was so utterly surprised that he could not move, but remained squatting by the whore’s still-living body.

  The next instant, she twisted, whipped around, and Jason felt burning agony slash across the area just above his knees. A second later he was on the ground, writhing in agony. His legs twitched and flailed, and he could not get them under control. He screamed until his throat felt as though it were bleeding, his severed hamstrings sending rapid phosphorous bursts into his brain.

  He felt the whore’s hand clutch at the muscle of his upper arm, and clench it until her fingers sank in like it were clay.

  “Fuck…you,” he heard her whisper. “Try getting away now”. Then her hand fell off of his arm and she went limp.

  Dead, dead, she’s dead his mind jabbered, in between white-hot spurts of torment. Dead, the whore is dead, ding dong the wicked whore is dead! He grinned, feeling one of his molars break, and tried to rise to his feet. He got just past his knees when he fell on his face again. His legs would not work, no matter how he tried it.

  There was shouting and commotion behind him, and despite the dim light he could see the mob of starving people clamor through the entrance and shamble their way up the tracks. He could see their twisted, dead faces, their staring eyes accusing him of anything, everything. Their ragged clothing whispered in the darkness and Jason could hear their teeth gnashing, slavering for him.

  Sobbing wildly, he began to slither forward like a snake. Blood bubbled out of his severed tendons and left an unseen trail behind him. He pulled himself forward on arms that were rebelling violently, complaining loudly with every stroke he made. He passed Emily, who had finally expired in truth, and tried to make his way under the turnstiles. For an agonizing moment he found that he was stuck. He grabbed the bars at the top and lifted, trying to push his way through with an awkward, forceful grace. As the horde climbed the platform and streaked forward, the turnstile finally moved, and he fell through onto the other side.

  I’m going to make it! he thought with soaring hope and joy. I’m going to live!

  He pulled himself forward with one hand, moving forward with a terrible slowness. The first of the cannibals leaped over the turnstile with an ugly, inhuman cry and fell on him. His injured legs lashed out viciously, catching the first two in their chins, but more came upon him after, clawing at his clothing and tearing it with neat, whispering rips. He tried to pull himself along further but found that the additional weight piled on top of him prevented him from moving. He beat at the frigid floor with his fists and screeched, his voice calling out a feline caterwaul. The cannibals stripped the rotting cloth from his legs and tore in, ripping chunks of flesh from his bleeding legs and devouring them with horrid, slurping smacks. Further back, he could hear the others, fighting with each other at last. Once the feast was presented, all decorum vanished.

  He wept, and they moved further up his legs, tearing out bleeding, quivering chunks of thigh-flesh and devouring it whole. When they got off of him, his flesh hanging from their fingers, he began to crawl forward again. Now that his death was finally upon him, he found that he desperately wanted to live.

  Just a little further he cackled to himself. Just a little further and I can get away from them, I can live, I can live again, just a little further…

  Ahead of him, just within reach, he saw the bridge that lead into the Yorkdale Mall. Just a little further, and he could make it across, find his way into the mall. Just a little further…

  The cannibals fell on him again, seeking more meat to ease their starving stomachs. He screamed, feeling their ragged, dirty fingernails tear into his upper thighs. He reached forward, holding his arms out towards the bridge, and then the world went white.

  After, there was nothing.

  Epilogue

  “The earth is round, there are springs under the orchards,

  The loam cuts with a blunt knife, beware of Elms in thunder, the lights in the sky are stars—

  We think they do not see, we think also

  The trees do not know, nor the leaves of the grasses hear us:

  The birds too are ignorant.

&n
bsp; Do not listen.

  Do not stand at dark in the open windows.

  We before you have heard this: they are voices:

  They are not words at all but the wind rising.

  Also, none among us has seen God.

  (…We have thought often

  The flaws of sun in the late and driving weather

  Pointed to one tree but it was not so.)

  As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous:

  The wind changes at night and the dreams come.

  It is very cold, there are strange stars near Arcturus,

  Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky”

  -Archibald MacLeish

  They sheltered in the confines of the Yorkdale Mall for a week, shell-shocked and in sore need of a good, thorough pack-job for the journey ahead. For the most part they kept to themselves; Mark and Olivia would gather food, warm clothes, and blankets, while Amber and Carlos pored over maps and thought through the logistics of their enterprise. Mark and Olivia shared a deep, loving silence between themselves, cooing over Victoria and holding each other in the windows that looked out over the snow-buried city. They saw Carlos and Amber only a few times, in passing while they wandered through the vast, echoing halls that ran between the smashed and partially looted shops. On several of those occasions, Mark had spied them holding hands, reaching out unconsciously to touch each other at times. Why not? Mark asked himself one night, as he thought this over. They’re survivors, and it’s what survivors do. They continue to survive, until the end of their days.

  The weather held hard and cold for the duration of the week, and the clouds had hovered grey and menacing above them. They would gather once a day to practice with the snowshoes on the roof, and the iron clouds billowing above would constantly threaten to spit snow down upon them. Although the wind would batter them and threaten to knock them down, the clouds never followed through on their threat. The snow held off, and after seven or eight days the cloud cover broke. Blue sky could be observed through the widening gaps in the slate grey, and the sun shone through at times to melt the top layer of the snow and warm their faces as they grew proficient with their snowshoes. A mid-winter thaw began to set in, and they talked quite seriously of staying to see if perhaps spring would take root early, in spite of historical evidence to the contrary. It was Olivia who eventually dispelled them of this notion.

  “Spring has never happened in early February and it never will,” she said. “This is just a thaw, a few days of good weather. Soon enough the clouds will come back, and it’ll snow again. Probably a lot”.

  None of them could deny that Olivia was correct in this. Still, they spent two days watching the weather and delaying the inevitable. In the end, they all came to the same conclusion more or less simultaneously. They needed to get moving, because even if spring were to miraculously come early there would still be the same problems as before. They were still living on canned food, and most of it would expire eventually, even if it didn’t run out first. Their only real hope lay outside of the city, where the farms still stretched across the land and continual growth and rebirth could still be an achievable life.

  On the last day that they spent in the mall, Mark stood at the window of an old, dust-layered bookstore that took up a great deal of space on the second floor. He looked out upon the entombed, clutched-together houses, with their collapsed roofs and their silent moldering. He wondered if he would ever look upon such a sight again, and found himself hoping that he would not. It was a strange feeling, for a man who had lived in such a city all of his life, but at the same time he felt as though it were the correct feeling. There was no life for his family out there, amongst the slumbering dead.

  Amber snuck up on him, surprising him with how silent her footsteps could be. She laid a hand on his shoulder and joined him in his inconversable gaze. There was a steady, breathing silence for quite some time.

  “I’m sorry that Emily couldn’t be here to see this,” she said after a time, breaking the quiet as gently as possible. “I’ll bet she had the idea for snowshoes the entire time, and just didn’t tell us”.

  Mark nodded. “She was quite…I don’t even know how to say it”.

  Amber smiled slightly, a sad, grieving smile. “You know, I felt something like that when we first met. I was a mess; everyone I knew had disappeared and I was wandering around my office in a daze, calling out names. Emily was the only other person I found that day, she was working as a temp, filing and copying or something, I don’t really know. She seemed so…I don’t know, out of it. Like she didn’t really understand what was going on, although I guess she must have, because…” She paused, blinking away tears, smiling ruefully. “I thought she was just puff, another silly little office girl with stars in her eyes. I thought, once reality set in and we saw what was going on, that she would just, I don’t know, crumble. She didn’t though, obviously”.

  “Obviously,” Mark echoed, smiling easily.

  “It’s just funny to remember her as I first met her,” Amber continued, “and then to realize, all this time later, that she’s really the only reason that any of us are still alive. Her and whatever went on in that head of hers, whatever lay behind all those far-off stares and those dreamy smiles, that’s the only reason you and I are standing here, miles from downtown, talking like this. And now she’s dead”.

  “And now she’s dead,” Mark mused, his smile fading. He felt that white-hot flare of guilt rise up in him again and it was out before he could consider his words.

  “I think I killed Barry,” he said, and it hung between them like a pall. The silence ticked off awkwardly, seconds turning into years before them. Finally he turned to look at her and saw tears streaming down Amber’s eyes. Her expression was not recriminating, though; rather, it was set with a pain that seemed almost like an old friend. She glanced and saw that he was watching her, and she turned to regard him steadily.

  “I can’t give you absolution,” she said, without rancor. “I don’t think there is anyone or anything in this universe that can. Why do you think you killed him?” There was a curl of curiosity that wound its way into her voice. Mark shrugged uncomfortably.

  “I was in the window posts a lot, and I…shot someone I saw in the windows of that coffee shop one night. Then, when Emily told me…how he died…I…”

  She nodded impatiently, cutting off whatever he was about to say.

  “I thought it might be something like that. I can’t say that I can forgive you,”

  Mark nodded, knowing that there was justice in what she said.

  “It’s not going to change how I think of you, though,” she continued. “You’re still a friend, one of the only ones I have in the world. It’s not like you killed him on purpose,”

  Mark laughed, despite himself. “You know, Carlos said the same thing”.

  “Did he?” she asked, her eyebrows raising. “He never told me anything. I wonder how he’d like…” she cut herself off, as if she were suddenly conscious of what she were about to say, and a faint blush rose up in her cheeks. “Accidents happen,” she said, trying to sober up, and then burst into a peal of laughter. “Oh Christ, do accidents ever happen!” she exclaimed, trying to stifle the laughter. She wiped tears out of her eyes. “What a terrible thing to say,” she murmured, and a shaft of light came through a cloud to shine into their window. They both shielded their eyes instinctively and they stood in silence, soaking in the warmth and strength of that single finger of the sun.

  “He always pushed us, after you left,” she said after a time. “He would say we had to find you two, find your baby, make sure you were ok. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty,” she said, suddenly concerned. “It’s not like that, I’m just…you know…”

  “I get it,” Mark rescued her. “It’s ok”.

  She smiled. “He always felt bad about that fist-fight you two got in, said that’s not the sort of thing you did to a friend. He said we owed you, and maybe he did. I don�
��t know. That was up to him, I guess. I went along because it felt right. I never liked the idea of you and Olivia being there, where god knows what was going on. Especially after we heard that Taggert…well, you know, you were there”.

  She fell quiet for a moment, and Mark was about to change the subject when she spoke again. She blurted it, as though it had been building in her for a long time, fermenting.

  “I miss him, but in a way I don’t,” she said. “Like, we kept each other warm at night, and that was all of it. We found each other, and that was that. And I miss him. I miss him. But it’s like he only sort of happened. Like I might have dreamt him. Then I see something that makes me free associate him, or I catch something in how Carlos smiles, and then…” She wiped at her eyes again, and her laugh was short and despairing. “It never gets easier, does it?” she asked.

  Mark shook his head and put his arm around her.

  “No. No, it never does”.

  The next day they left, tromping away from the mall on snowshoes and pulling two carefully stacked and tied sleighs behind them. As they had prepared to leave, they had joked about being Antarctic explorers, and from a distance this was exactly what they appeared to be. From the mall they went a short way north and found the gradual rise of the onramp to the highway. They started their ascent at ten in the morning and went carefully, making it onto the wide river of hard white snow at the top a half-hour before noon. They stopped to survey the area, taking in the desolation.

  The old highway was dotted by large, uneven rises in the otherwise flat, smooth snowfield. Underneath, the crumpled, grown-together wrecks of cars rotted, and they passed the lumps and piles with a medieval sense of superstition. They sheltered beside them at night, huddling next to them in heavy sleeping bags, but they left them otherwise alone. It would have been useless, in any event; they would have dug at the piles for an hour and only revealed twisted, questioning metal, which would gleam brainlessly in the sunlight.