A. R. Shaw's Apocalyptic Sampler: Stories of hope when humanity is at its worst

by A. R. Shaw

  A short meow in the doorway caught his attention. Soon his gray tabby, Henry, jumped up in his lap. “Hi there, big guy.” Running his hand down the cat’s back once, he grabbed his phone off the side table and pressed his thumb to the pad as Henry made a circle on his lap and settled down. Up came a sea of green windows. He thumbed down through the forest to get to the top message only to find they’d started the night before. “Jeez, Fel.” Paul huffed out a breath and slid his glasses up his nose. He looked at Henry, “She says I need to watch out for Kim. She has a bad feeling about her this time. Hah! Felicia, darling…Kim’s always been a bad feeling.” His head throbbed after reading the first of many texts. “Off Henry. First coffee. I’d better still have some. I don’t know what the hell she wants. We just went through this last week,” he said as he realized he’d overdone the whiskey last night by the strength of the spins he received standing up too fast. “I’ve gotta stop that.”

  He knew the drinking was a little out of control for a while now. But in his own determination, he abstained from the company stuff. That was something he never partook in. Unlike in Felicia’s case, it was like dipping in the company pool to him. Plus, he hated the stuff. Hated what it cost him in the end.

  46

  Matthew

  While Matthew drove back to the hospital in the early dawn, Dane kept to herself in the passenger seat. He couldn’t help but think about the events of last night. Well after the lovemaking, Dane didn’t think he knew as he held her close against his chest. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard her dreams up close. There was a thing Dane didn’t know about herself. She talked a lot more than she ever knew…in her sleep. She had nightmares, of course. Most of the smokejumpers did. They had reasons to be afraid during the day…. they were all pretty much traumatized but that was due to fire and the consequences of the job. At first, he thought she was reliving what had just happened with Tuck and Cal when she began thrashing around last night. But he was wrong; this was different. This was something out of her past. He only knew that because of the names she’d yelled out. They weren’t familiar to him and whoever the hell Paul was, she sure didn’t like that guy. That’s when he wasn’t surprised when her legs began to tremble, tangled in his own, as if she were getting ready to run, fight or kick out. He’d braced himself. He’d kissed the top of her head then and whispered, “It’s all right, Dane. I’ve got you. Shhh…it’s all right.” Her forearms pushed against his hairy bare chest in some dreamy fight. The crescendo to her slumber war came when she yelled out, “Daaad!”

  “It’s okay, Dane. You’re safe,” Matthew said again, holding her a little tighter in his arms, hoping to reach her wherever she was. Soften the blows to her heart, whatever had happened to her to make her as hard as she was today.

  She’d let out a dreamy sob in the end, right into his chest.

  At first, he realized, when they shared a tent, that her dreams had to do with some kind of fire. She’d struggle in her sleep in the cot next to his many times, even in the common room in Missoula, and she’d wave at thin air with her fists. She’d often hold them out defensively in front of her, ready to fight. Turning, she pushed her palms away, letting out a desperate scream. She was always trying to fight or get away from something or someone, and eventually she’d shoot up yelling and then turn over and go back to sleep, unaware of the breach into her soul. He never really understood until last night. He’d have asked the questions, but that was a private thing, just like Samantha’s death was a private thing to him. And if there was one thing he knew about Dane…she was hiding something. Something she didn’t want anyone to know, and it cost her a lot more than she realized. She had a problem and that problem was quickly becoming his own problem, especially after last night.

  He pulled into a space of the hospital and put the truck in park. “We’re here,” he said because Dane had not stirred even as the truck came to a stop. “Do you want to come in and grab some coffee in the waiting room? I remember it’s better than that crap at the airport.”

  She sat up and looked around. “I think the power’s out. Generator must have blown.”

  “Huh, yeah. I didn’t notice.” He cracked the door open. “You coming?”

  “Nah, I think I’ll stay here.”

  “You want some coffee if they have any? We might not find any more later.”

  She nodded and even gave him a little smile.

  It seemed odd, but he smiled back, anyway.

  “Matthew?”

  He opened the truck door again.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  He tilted his head to the side a bit and pulled his brows together. “You’re…welcome.” He walked halfway toward the building and turned around. She was watching him through the windshield. She even waved. Later, he knew why.

  47

  Kim

  “Officer, I need to get to that building, right there,” Kim pointed.

  “Ma’am, stay behind the lines. Evacuations were ordered. If you didn’t get the notice, there’s nothing I can do for you. It’s not safe beyond this line. We have to move the safety zone back.

  The man next to her caught the officer’s attention and that pissed Kim off. “I work for Mr. Torrio. In that building right there,” she said, very loud and unmistakably clear.

  The conversation with the officer ceased immediately and he stared at her for a moment with a smile and Irish blue eyes.

  She knew the wheels were turning, the walnuts jumbling around in that empty cavity like a wasted popcorn machine. He was weighing the risks and consequences; that’s what he was doing in the silence before he spoke again.

  “Mr. Torrio at work this morning?”

  “Why wouldn’t he be? The man’s at work twenty hours a day every day. You know that,” she said with a jut of her chin. “You want to call him yourself and check?” she asked, thrusting her cell phone over the police tape ahead of her.

  His pale blue eyes considered her a moment more and then he lifted the yellow tape. “Go on,” he said with a quick tilt of his head.

  She ran through and when she looked back the officer had his hands up to the crowd jeering for him to make an exception to their pleas as well.

  “Hah,” she said to herself and when she reached the building, she went to pull open the door, but it was locked. After a quick glance at the police officer holding back the crowd, she swung around to the brick side alleyway and headed for the back entrance, where the newer warehouse was connected to the old building. A rat scurried across the alley from one heap of trash to the next. She barely noticed as she too hurried with quick steps to the enter the warehouse entrance at the back of the building. When she got through the door, she realized the smoke was heavier than it was the day before and the power was out on this part of town too. It was as if the city was dying in stages, like an organ failure in a terminal patient, steadily creeping from one end to the other on its way to the heart.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He’d startled her into a jump as she closed the door behind her. “I didn’t think you’d be here yet. It’s too early.”

  “I said I’d call you and meet you somewhere else. I don’t want you here.”

  “If you haven’t noticed the city is in a crisis. Did you think we’d meet at some open café, grab ourselves a double cappuccino? How did you get past the line, anyway?”

  He just stared at her dumbly.

  “Ah…I figured. So I just used your name until the cop let me pass through. I see you have more pull than you used to and now you use it. In the old days you had a problem with that leverage. Things have changed.”

  He barely listened to her as he thumbed through a stack of papers on a work table.

  “And some things haven’t. I seriously can’t believe you’re still doing it that way. Makes no sense.”

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “You’re not ever coming back here to work for me.”

&nbs
p; “I have no intention of ever working for you. Especially when you give me what I’m owed.”

  He stopped for a second and just looked at her under the thin frames of his glasses.

  “About that. What is it you think you know?”

  “Ah, no. You won’t get that information out of me that easily. I want what I earned, Paul. Give me the cash and that’s it. That’s all. I’ll leave. You won’t see me again.”

  “I can’t believe you have the audacity to come here in the first place.”

  “Oh, I have the audacity and I also have something else, too.”

  He’d moved on to another box of papers, still busily looking for something.

  She lit a smoke. Took a toke.

  “You can’t do that in here.”

  She blew the smoke out in a long, narrow stream, waving her arm around. “Like it matters. You think inspectors are going to come in here and shut this place down because of a little cigarette smoke? The whole fucking place is on fire, Paul. What’s happened to you?”

  “Kim…if you have something to say…say it. Otherwise leave.”

  “Pay up first.”

  “No.”

  She watched him as he ignored her. She laughed, took another drag off her cigarette and strolled to another table full of boxes with little packets inside. She reached in, picked one up. “Bloody Mary.”

  “Put that down.”

  “Does it have that bloody Mary mix taste?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She put a handful of the little packets into her pocket instead.

  “Let me put it to you this way, Paul. I have an asset you want. You owe me money. If you don’t pay up…she’s not worth shit. And there’s no reason she needs to exist.”

  He dropped the stack of papers he was going through and gripped either side of the box. Slowly, he stood upright and looked at her with a steely gaze. That thrumming on the side of his neck…she saw that too.

  She got his attention in a way she wasn’t sure was wise.

  48

  Matthew

  “Nurse was hot.”

  “When you’re on Vicodin…most nurses are hot…even the burly ones. The other ones are oracles. Hell, even the wheelchairs are sexy.”

  “No seriously…her name’s Beth. I even got her number.”

  “Too bad. We’re headed out, lover boy. We’ve gotta get home and bury Tuck’s remains. I think we all need a break after that,” Matthew said as they made their way to the truck. He balanced two tiny Styrofoam cups of black coffee as they weaved between vehicles. One for him and one for Dane.

  “What about the other remains?” Owen asked.

  “Who?”

  “You know, Cal’s?”

  “Again, who?”

  “Hey where is she? Didn’t you say Dane was waiting in the truck? She’s not in there.”

  “I did.” He looked around the smoke-filled parking lot. Took a sip of his now lukewarm coffee.

  “Maybe she had to use the john?”

  “Maybe,” Matthew said, but he had a funny feeling. He didn’t think so. “We’ll wait a few and then give her a call if she doesn’t show up.” But when he opened the door of the cab, Dane’s phone lay in the passenger seat, abandoned by its owner.

  “She must be inside. Her phone’s still here.”

  Matthew nodded but he knew better.

  Dane was gone.

  They waited in the truck for over fifteen minutes. The painkillers were beginning to make Owen fall asleep. His head already began lolling to the side of the window in the backseat.

  Matthew kept checking on him through the rearview mirror. And then it began to rain. As soon as Owen’s eyes closed, Matthew grabbed his phone. Something gnawed at him while he scrolled through the search results for Dane Talbot. In the pit of his stomach he knew Dane was in some kind of trouble and it occurred to him he really didn’t know much about her except what he’d gleaned from her nightmares.

  He did know that she wasn’t in the hospital’s bathroom because she’d never gone into the building in the first place. She wasn’t coming back. He knew this because it wasn’t right the way she said ‘thank you’. Dane didn’t say thank you. And she sure as hell didn’t leave her phone behind. That…was goodbye.

  His right thumb suddenly lifted off one search result while the rain came down in waves, pelting against the hood of the truck like Ping-Pong balls. “Sonofabitch,” Matthew whispered after reading a familiar name in a Chicago news report dated a couple of years ago.

  49

  Paul

  A couple of years ago.

  He sat a stool down next to the desk in his office. Paul wasn’t sure what Mr. Talbot was up to, but he had a good feeling.

  “Did you bring dinner today, Paul?”

  “Uh, no sir, but I’m not hungry. I’ve got a few things to study.”

  He waved his arm and stood from his chair. “Dane, can you bring Paul a plate of that pasta, too? He’s going to eat with us.”

  She’d popped her head around the corner. “Dad, I have a class, remember? It’s just you two tonight.”

  “Oh, right. I remember. Don’t stay out later. I don’t want to have to wait up for you like last night.”

  “I won’t, but geez Dad, I’m not sixteen anymore,” she said with a smile that made Paul’s heart beat faster. He clenched his hand around the napkin she handed him along with a plate of chicken alfredo and wadded it up into a tight ball when she wafted out the front door moments later, smelling of a fall breeze-like cinnamon and cider.

  “She came home late last night?” Paul asked and hoped the question sounded nonchalant.

  Her dad was about to take another bite of the spiraled pasta wound around his fork. It was always a challenge to get around his gray mustache without leaving a few clinging remnants. “She’s…yes. Dating some guy in her fire safety class.” He shook his head. “Seems nice enough. Maybe too nice? Something about him, I just don’t like. I’m probably just being a dad.” He’d smiled with a guilty glance at Paul. “She brought him around last week. He’s headed to med school after this semester.”

  The bite Paul chewed, he suddenly swallowed too soon, and it held in his pipe a little longer than normal. He started coughing and reached for his water glass. Took a big gulp to force it down.

  “Take it easy. She’s not the best cook but it’s not that bad.”

  “No, it’s good. Well, she ah…seems happy.”

  “Ah, you can never tell with Dane. Since her mother died, I think she’s just going through the motions of what she thinks expected of her. She’ll be all right. She’s a smart girl. It’s just been her and me for years now. Well, you should know what that’s like. Your dad’s been gone for what, ten years or more now, isn’t that right?”

  “Uh, yeah. But he was never around much as it was…before.”

  “Oh, how’s your mom doing these days?”

  “She’s good. Still working at the convenience store.”

  “Paul, she’s getting up there now and that neighborhood’s gone downhill. It was bad when Teresa and I lived out there. You need to move her out of there.”

  He nodded. It was a notion Mr. Talbot had driven home in the past year, though it was easier said than done. He wasn’t making much as it was, and taking night classes at the community college didn’t help matters. “I walk her home every evening and I’ve found a place for her nearby. I’m just waiting for my next paycheck.”

  “Well, Paul, if you need an advance on that you should have said so.” He reached for his back pocket. “I think of you as a son.”

  “No. Mr. Talbot, I don’t want you to pay me early.”

  “Nonsense. Here’s this week’s and an advance on next week’s pay. You go put down a deposit on that new place,” he said as he laid out a wad of cash and put one bill on top of the other.

  Paul couldn’t help but notice the pile he flipped back in half was three times the thickness of what he’d just doled out on the desk and then
picked his fork back up and twirled it in the creamy pasta once again.

  “So now that you’ve perfected the formula for the drink powder, what’s the next step?”

  Chewing his bite in thought, Mr. Talbot pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Well, since I’ve retired from the fire department, this is just a hobby really. There’re too damn many regulations to tackle the red tape to make it legal. And I’m too damn old. So…I can sell the patent to someone who wants to deal with all the trouble for a pretty penny someday or I could just enjoy the fruits of my labor and continue to give out samples here and there without payment. Either way…I’ll leave something more than my just my retirement for Dane to live on after I go.”

  For the second time that night, Paul clenched the wadded-up napkin in his fist. After spending nearly seven years cleaning up after and working with the old man, he wondered why he didn’t see the potential in the project he helped develop all those years.

  “With all due respect, Mr. Talbot, I think what you’ve created is worth fighting all the red tape for. Don’t you see it could really bring in more than just an inheritance for Dane? Heck, I’d help you.”

  Mr. Talbot peered at him in that way he’d learned to avoid over the years. You just couldn’t push him. “We’ve had this discussion before, Paul. I’ve made my decision.” He shook his head. “It’s not what I want to do. It’s not how I want to spend the rest of my life. It was just a hobby. A challenge. If I went that route, the stress it would cause would take me to an early grave. I want to be here for Dane and her children someday. I’m an old man, as it is. I choose my battles carefully. Dealing with politicians—that’s just not worth the fight. I’d rather pick gum off the underside of school bus seats the rest of my life. That’s a young, foolish man’s goal, not mine. Now that’s the end of it. I’m not selling it and I’m not developing it. I just enjoy giving it out. Don’t bring it up again.”