The Enduring: Stories of Surviving the Apocalypse

by Nicholas Ryan

  We lapsed into a kind of prickly silence. I was thinking about Zane Francescato and how the Apocalypse had impacted on a young man who had begun the horror as a university student and returned here now – two years later – as a man. The toll was not immediately obvious because on the surface he had retained a kind of affable geniality that was probably part of his nature. It was only when you scratched below the surface that the profound extent of the traumas he had endured began to show in little flashes of temper, and a gaze that could turn from friendly to ice in an instant. I supposed the Apocalypse had affected all those who had endured in different ways. On the young – like Zane – perhaps the impact had been the greatest.

  I wondered what that meant for America as we moved forward into a future with fuel shortages, starvation and a population wary and mistrustful of its government and even strangers within its own communities.

  I don’t know what Zane was thinking right then; perhaps he was remembering those dark moments at the University, or maybe he was reflecting on what he had been forced to do in order to endure. Nothing showed on his face. His expression was fixed, revealing nothing.

  “So you drove to Alamosa,” I said, breaking the uneasy spell of silence.

  The corner of Zane’s mouth twitched. “I drove to my uncle’s farm,” Zane qualified. “It’s about five hours drive from here. It’s like a half-way point between here and Alamosa.”

  “And you made that part of the journey without incident?”

  Zane started to reply and then stopped himself. He dug his hands deep into his pockets and leaned his hip against a wall. He raised an eyebrow and glared at me cynically.

  “Do you mean, did I kill any more of the ‘Afflicted’?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. It was exactly what I meant, but I sensed Zane’s hostility, and my instincts told me the interview teetered on the precipice. Regardless, I stared at him frankly. “That is what I mean.”

  Zane narrowed his eyes. “Yes,” he said eventually. “I killed two more of the ‘Afflicted’ on the way to my uncle’s farm.”

  I sat up a little straighter. “Tell me what happened.”

  Zane pushed himself away from the wall and went to stare out through the broken glass of a nearby window. When he began to speak, it was like he was talking to the clouds… or maybe the heavens.

  “By the time I got on the road, the freeways were choked,” he said. “There were lines of cars for miles, people walking along the side of the road carrying their possessions on their backs. Some pushing bicycles. Parents dragging their crying children by the hand, hurrying in panic. Everyone was looking over their shoulder, expecting the ‘Afflicted’ to appear on the skyline at any moment. People turned ugly. There were car accidents and fistfights. I saw one guy get out of his station wagon and shoot a woman in the head… for her car. His had broken down. He stole her car and then drove a few hundred yards before he lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a crowd of people pulling a hand cart behind them. The car went into the crowd and bodies were thrown into the air like rag dolls. The cart must have been filled with everything the family owned. People got out of their cars. No one helped the driver. No one even helped the family. They just stole whatever they could pick up and drove away. It was scary. It was ugly. It was brutal and heartless.”

  “Did you stop, Zane?”

  “No,” he whispered, and lowered his head with his own shame and regret. “I was too scared to.”

  There are different kinds of silences. As a journalist you learn them all. There are the kind of silences when someone you’re interviewing doesn’t want to answer a question – the squirming silence. And there are those heavy silences when you make a profound point that just has no creditable answer.

  This wasn’t one of those silences. This was the kind of quiet that comes when you peel back the flesh covering a tender open wound that is so painful it chokes the words in your throat and swells agonizingly in your chest so you can’t breath.

  It lasted for several minutes.

  “When I found a side road, I pulled off the freeway,” Zane went on, the emotional wound left open and festering, “I checked my bug out bag and tried to get a sense of where I was – the best way to reach my uncle’s.”

  “Where were you at that time?”

  Zane shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t remember,” he said. “I was just parked up on this side road. There was a farm house at the end of a dirt road. The building was on fire.”

  “You mentioned a bug out bag. Tell me more about that.”

  Zane turned and looked at me, his features once again composed. “I always knew the Apocalypse would come,” he said with no conceit or pride. “To me it was inevitable – the way the world was heading. A disaster like this was bound to happen. So I started stockpiling survival equipment: a tent, sleeping bag, provisions to last me three weeks with proper rationing, spare clothes and some weapons.”

  “Weapons? Like the hammer?”

  Zane gave a curt shake of his head. “A Marine KA-BAR knife and a collapsible police baton.”

  “No gun?”

  “No. I was too young to purchase a pistol for myself, Mr. Culver. And guns were outlawed on my campus,” he said stiffly.

  “Did you ever use the knife?”

  “Yes.”

  I got up from the dusty broken table and walked a slow silent lap around the remains of the room we were standing in. The wrecked building seemed a perfect analogy for everything we had become as a nation. Once it had been filled with laughter, hope and aspirations. Now it was just an empty shell, abandoned… but it was still standing.

  One day it might once again be a place for future generations to dream and aspire. But that day was not today.

  Nor tomorrow.

  “What happened?” I asked at last.

  Zane’s shoulders slumped and the harrowing shadows came back into his eyes. “I waited on the side road for an hour or so,” he explained. “By then, most of the traffic pouring out of the Seward area had thinned. I got back onto the highway and kept driving towards my uncle’s farm. Everything was going fine. I had plenty of gas and the car was solid. I drove past long lines of refugees walking on the roadside and there were burned out and abandoned cars too. The further I got away from Seward the more ruin and devastation I saw. Houses were on fire – black smoke filled the air so day turned into night. The only thing coming out of the radio was the emergency broadcast. I tried to find a news channel – and at the moment I was distracted I smashed into the back of a burning car that had been abandoned in the middle of the blacktop.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  Zane shook his head. “I got out of my Jeep. I could see a black charred arm hanging from out of one of the back windows of the car I had hit. I had the knife in my hand. I went towards the back door. I could smell the stench of burning flesh,” he screwed up his face at the hideous memory. “When I looked inside the back of the vehicle there were two burned bodies. They looked like kids. The flesh had been scorched off them – their bones were all that was left. They were still smoldering…”

  “What did you do?” Without realizing it, my voice had dropped to a whisper.

  “That part of the freeway was deserted. When I looked back to the horizon, I could see a long brown line of refugees just topping the rise. I thought my Jeep was wrecked. I left the driver’s door open and kicked the engine over. Thankfully it coughed into life. I reversed a few feet. I was going to drive away. There was nothing I could do for the children.”

  “And then?”

  “And then two of the ‘Afflicted’ came running at me from out of the smoke,” Zane’s voice became chilled with memories of horror. “They had both been men. The closest one only had one arm. The other looked like it had been ripped out of its shoulder socket. There was nothing there apart from a tattered shirt sleeve soaked in blood. He came for me, roaring. It was inhuman – maniacal. His eyes were wild. I couldn’t get the Jeep backed up quick enough. I got
out just as the first one reached the open door. I hefted the knife and buried the blade into its forehead.”

  “You killed it?”

  “Yes. Instantly. It went over onto its back and didn’t move again.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “It was bigger, faster. Its hair had been singed off, maybe in the same fire that had consumed the car and the kids. I don’t know. Its face was black, and there were flaps of flesh hanging from its cheeks, weeping puss and blood. One of the thing’s eyes was dangling down on its cheek. It rushed towards me. I tried to pull the KA-BAR from the dead one’s skull but it was in too deep. I kicked at the second ghoul and caught it in the chest. It went over backwards on the road.”

  “You got away.”

  “No,” Zane said and wrung his hands. “I tried. I ran back for the Jeep but the ghoul came for me again. The collapsible police baton was in the bug out bag on the passenger seat. I hit the ghoul over the head with it and it reeled away, howling. That gave me the time I needed to get back behind the wheel and flee.”

  I wrote everything down and then leaned against one of the walls, reflecting; playing Zane’s story over in my mind. Some might be prone to embellishing their survival stories with tales of bravado – but Zane wasn’t one of them. He didn’t retell his story like he had been an action hero. It was real – filled with fear, panic, but also the stoic instinct to do whatever was required to survive. It wasn’t a recollection of heroic bravery – just a young man fighting for his life.

  “You made it to your uncle’s home without further incident?”

  “Yes,” Zane said. “When I got there, my uncle was ready. He had extra gas for me, water and a gun.”

  “He didn’t go with you?”

  “No,” Zane shook his head and smiled with fond memory. “My uncle wasn’t that kind of man, Mr. Culver. That farm was his home. He wouldn’t abandon it. He was the kind of man who would have fought to the death to defend it.” There was a long beat of silence before Zane’s voice dropped to a whisper and the smile slipped from his face, replaced with regret and sadness. “Which he did. We never saw him again.”

  “But your parents? They survived, right?”

  “Yes,” Zane straightened, the hardness still in his eyes but beginning to soften with relief. “The rest of my drive into Alamosa was without incident. The closer I got to home, the more stable things seemed. It was clear that the ‘Affliction’ had yet to reach this far in from the coast. Thankfully it stayed that way – none of the ‘Afflicted’ ever reached the San Luis Valley.”

  I closed my notebook and put it back into my pocket. I shook Zane Francescato’s hand. His grip was firm, strong.

  “What now?” I asked him. “It’s been two years since the ‘Affliction’. Where do you go from here?”

  Zane gave me a last wistful smile. “I go back home,” he said. “Back to Alamosa, and we continue rebuilding. We take what is left, and we lift it up out of the ashes, Mr. Culver.”

  He said it as though the answer was obvious.

  * * *

  Valparaiso, Indiana:

  “It’s the land,” Tara Copsy said sadly with her hands on her hips. “Nothing grows where the ‘Afflicted’ have been.” She nudged at the dirt with the toe of her boot like it was a sleepy dog that needed rousing, and then looked around her slowly. We were standing in the shadow of the family’s two story home, elevated on a hilltop with a spreading view of open country side all around us. Tara smiled without humor. “We tried to come back here after the Apocalypse had passed,” she explained. “We thought we could grow crops – sustain ourselves. But the land has been contaminated. Ruined.”

  “So you and your family are still living at the Indiana National Guard Armory?”

  “Yes,” she said. She was a woman in her late thirties, or maybe her early forties, with a short bob of sandy brown hair and friendly eyes. She was wearing a button up shirt and dusty blue jeans. “We’re one of four families that made it to safety.”

  I held my hand up to my face to shield my eyes from the afternoon sun. The day was warm, the sky achingly blue. In a nearby tree I heard birds chirping, and the sound of it startled me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had heard or seen wildlife of any kind. It sounded like a soft song of hope.

  “How many times have you been back here, since the Apocalypse swept through Indiana?” I asked.

  Tara pursed her lips. “This is only the second time,” she said. “And I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t to meet you.”

  My surprise must have registered in my expression. Tara was shaking her head slowly. “My husband, Joe, and I drove back here about six months ago, just to see if the house was standing and to see whether we could move back and farm the land…”

  “And?”

  Tara hooded her eyes and then her voice dropped to a whisper, even though we were the only people for miles. “The undead – the ‘Afflicted’ – there was two of them inside the house. Joe found the bodies in the kitchen.”

  “Dead? I mean really, dead?”

  Tara nodded her head and then clapped her hand across her chest, over her heart. “Thank God,” she said. “I don’t know what would have happened if they’d still been moving.”

  “Did you see them?” I drew the notepad out of my pocket and started writing.

  “No,” Tara shook her head like that was a good thing. “I never laid eyes on them.”

  “What did your husband say about them?”

  “Just that there was two of them, both decomposed. He said they were all just bones, dressed in tattered rags. They had rampaged through the house, tearing it apart. For some reason they never left. He found them on the kitchen floor.”

  “What happened to the corpses?”

  “Joe burned them,” Tara said. “He didn’t know what else to do. We didn’t want to just leave them in the house,” she shrugged. “As it turns out, it probably didn’t matter. I wouldn’t live here again. The contamination – the ‘Affliction’ – no one knows what caused it or if it can still be caught.”

  I put my notebook away and rolled the sleeves of my shirt up to my elbows. The sun was fierce. I could feel sweat trickling down my back.

  “And your husband, Joe? How does he feel about that?”

  Tara gave me a mirthless little smile. “He wanted to burn the whole house down,” she said. “If he’d had his way we would be standing in a pile of ash right now.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  She shrugged, as if the answer was simply too hard to explain in a sentence. “I thought, maybe one day…” her voice trailed off into a wistful silence. “There might be the chance to come back here – reclaim the house. There are a lot of memories here: Jonah and Benjamin… my two sons. Losing the house would be like losing a part of what makes us who we are.” She shook her head, suddenly adamant. “No. Better to leave it standing, even if we never walk through those doors again,” her tone became resolute. “The cemetery is filled with headstones for a similar reason, Mr. Culver. It gives people some place to go to remember…”

  I nodded my head. It was a poetic analogy.

  “But you’re scared to be here, right?”

  “I won’t deny that,” Tara admitted. “Being here still frightens me.”

  “Even though the Apocalypse burned itself out almost two years ago?”

  She gave me another expressive shrug of her shoulders. “My reluctance has nothing to do with logic,” she said. “It’s not something that can be reasoned or explained. The reasons are deeper than that. They’re emotional. The National Guard Armory is safe. It’s fenced. The ‘Afflicted’ never breached the defenses there, so the ground is good. And it’s secure from anything and everything that might be trouble – living and dead.”

  There was a thinly veiled warning in Tara’s explanation that didn’t go unnoticed. I sensed there was a backstory here, beneath the layers, that was worthy of exploring.

  “You mean criminals? Bandits?”r />
  Tara licked dry cracked lips and looked suddenly troubled. She nodded her head. “We’ve had incidents,” she hinted. “People who wanted to take what we were defending.”

  I narrowed my eyes and regarded Tara carefully. She looked very much like a typical mom – the kind of person you might see on a sidewalk and stop for a friendly chat with. But beneath the exterior was a woman of stern resolve.

  “They attacked the compound?”

  “Yes.”

  “When? How many?”

  Tara’s eyes darkened. She shook her head. “I don’t know, exactly,” she began. “It was about eight months ago. It happened at night. We had the perimeter of the compound lit up with torches because one of the women from another family thought she had heard noises during the afternoon from the trees that bordered the grounds. There are dense woods behind the main compound building.”

  I nodded. “So you lit up the perimeter?”

  “Not all of it,” Tara said. “It’s quite a large fenced property. But we lit up the area along the chain wire fence near the trees.”

  “And that was where the bandits came from?”

  She nodded her head. “There was over a dozen of them,” Tara’s voice changed and became bitter. “Thugs, scum. They were in a couple of cars. They were hiding amongst the trees, revving the engines of their vehicles and blaring the horns – doing everything they could to unnerve us. Joe and the other men went down towards the fence. That was when the first shot was fired.”

  “By who?”

  “One of them,” Tara sneered. “They opened fire and one of our men went down. Luckily it was only a flesh wound. The shot hit him in the thigh.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “We all took up a weapon.”

  “Even the women?”

  “Of course!” Tara was offended by the inference. “I know how to handle a gun, Mr. Culver. I’m a good shot.”

  I felt myself wither a little under Tara’s scorn. Her chin was thrust out, her hands on her hips, defiant and proud.