by Ryan Schow
He couldn’t say, we’ll see, or maybe. It was a definite and resounding no. As if he hadn’t a thought in his mind about scaring my daughter, his niece.
I open my mouth to tell him to have some common sense, but Macy is already speaking so the rush of words dies in the back of my throat instead.
“Well whomever invented sewers and toilets was a genius,” Macy says. “I mean, can you imagine having to dig a hole in the back yard every time you have to…do your thing?”
“Macy!” I say, stifling a laugh.
She looks at me, but Rex is already laughing, which I’m afraid might encourage her further and this has me firing him a look. It doesn’t matter, though. I take in all of us, with our dirty hair and our filthy clothes, and I think, thank God the toxic rain has stopped! And if Rex is right about the EMP, then that would mean that perhaps the drones have stopped, too.
He says that was the point.
The clouds are still a leaden grey, the sky a wash of slow moving smoke. Even the air stinks of burnt things and people, which makes me wonder how many more rains we’ll need before this city is finally scrubbed clean of this nightmare.
“Before the dawn of civilization, you just dropped your britches and went where you needed to,” Rex says, keeping the issue alive like some sort of spastic teenager. “When you’re done, you just kick a little dirt over it and bingo, you’re done. It’ll probably be like that now that the power’s out.”
I wonder if having just been shot and held hostage in the field has turned his brain upside down. What is wrong with him?
“Will you two please stop,” I ask, flashing Macy warning eyes. Then to my brother, it’s a hard stare followed by, “You should know better.”
“Lighten up, Cincinnati, we’ve just survived a traumatic experience.”
“This whole last month has been a traumatic experience.”
He shrugs his good shoulder and shows me a smirk that says he’ll try to behave, but only to appease me. At this point, the fact that he’s not showing pain is pretty amazing, especially considering our mad dash from downtown to the Presidio left our friend Gunner dead and Rex shot in the shoulder.
“These are questions critical to our survival,” Macy argues, totally serious. “Especially when you have to go number two. I mean think about it—”
“I have been,” I argue.
“What about when we run out of toilet paper? Are we supposed to just paw ourselves clean with our hands? Or should we use old copies of the Wall Street Journal? Or whatever socks have the biggest holes in them?”
“That’s gross,” I say.
“Well if Uncle Rex is saying this is basically the end of the world,” Macy continues, undeterred, “then these are serious questions in need of honest answers.”
“There’s also the garbage to consider,” Stanton says, chiming in. “Humans are good at making waste. A lot of it.”
“Can you please not add to this?” I ask, leveling him with a stare.
I’m starting to feel outnumbered here.
“You’ll find what you need for now,” Indigo says over her shoulder, “and we’ll figure out the rest as we go. Think of this as a journey, not a destination.”
By now we’re following this mysterious teen down Jackson Street and I’m not exactly sure where we’re going, only that this tall, skinny thing told us we’re heading to the Panhandle at the edge of Golden Gate Park, which feels like forever away.
Without meaning to, I begin to wonder what in God’s name turned this poor girl into this hunter/killer before us. I want to know who she is, how she came to be where she was the minute we needed her, what she’s hoping to get out of helping us.
Trudging through this apocalyptic nightmare, the air growing damp again, but the smoke clearing somewhat, I can’t help but shiver. It’s not the cold, it’s this place. It’s eerie. Haunting. Like some sort of weighted stillness has fallen over the streets. The same ghostly silence that settles over a battlefield after the cowards and the weak have fled and the last warrior has fallen. Somewhere a woman is sobbing. All around us, desperate souls wander the streets, not sure where to go, what to do, how to cope with this awful new future.
I don’t blame them.
To my husband (who’s doing his best to keep up despite the gash he received on the back of his head from when our apartment was raided by thugs pretending to be cops), I move near him, lower my voice and say, “These people out here are…they’re just…they’re aimless, vacant, afraid. Is that us? Are we those people, too, but we just don’t know it yet?”
He looks at me and gives a slow nod that lets me know he understands exactly what I’m saying, and exactly what’s on my mind.
“Our daughter killed a man,” he whispers. He says it so low I practically have to read his lips to truly get the message. Beneath my breast, a rolling ache starts up again.
“How’s your head?” I ask, changing the subject.
There’s no mention of what I did to save him back at our house, the man I shot point blank, how all of us almost died in the apartment we stole from a defenseless old lady who ended up dead and stashed on a hillside because of us.
Touching the tender spot on the back of his head, he doesn’t make the face I expect. The slightest little surprised expression brightens his features instead. “If I were languishing for attention, I’d say it hurts. But I’m not. Even though it does.”
A smile curls my lips despite the emotions grating through me. “If that’s the case, you’re doing one hell of a job not showing it.”
“It’s like a scraped knee,” he replies, “but on my head.”
A small, sad laugh escapes me.
“It’s a bit more than that,” I say, thinking the wound will need to be cleaned and stitched up. “But I’m glad you’re okay.”
I turn back to the road ahead, to the graveyard of houses and businesses, to the abandoned cars and the bodies both alive and dead, and I think to myself, how will I stitch up his cut with no medical equipment?
One tragedy at a time, Sin…
Bone tired and weary, our little group tramps along a dozen more blocks, working to keep up with Indigo. We walk past rack and ruin; we walk past a thousand destroyed dreams; we walk past endless proof that the future I once imagined now rests on a different timeline in a different universe that will be nothing like this one we see before us.
More than once I make eye contact with people wandering by. My heart feels destroyed with every interaction. It’s like looking into deep space and hoping to find life, but seeing only vast emptiness instead. Some of these walking corpses want water, or our help; some just sit there on the curbs and cry out loud or weep quietly to themselves; some have their eyes open and it’s abundantly clear that no one is home, that no one will ever be home again.
By now an hour of walking has passed. My feet ache but I won’t say it. I want to scream, to cry, to let this thunderous well of grief break loose in the mother of all explosions, but my time in the ER taught me many things, one of which is to break down on your own time, away from the action, far from the eyes of your peers and patients.
So I follow Indigo almost aimlessly, feeling the light dying in my eyes, cataloguing the ever increasing drain this new burden is putting upon my body, my mind and my soul.
“Look at these people,” I hear myself saying to no one in general.
“Zombies,” Indigo says.
Not real zombies. Just people on their way to nowhere. Stumbling towards a future that existed in the past only to realize the years ahead are a now a God-sized blank slate. A blank slate dusted with the ash of a civilization that’s been burned to the ground in a matter of weeks presumably by terrors of their own creation.
If these zombies are anything like me, then perhaps they’re wondering what will happen next. Will we starve to death? Get killed by more of those Ophidian psychos? Trust a stranger with our lives, our well being, our future only to be left weak and vulnerable?
T
he future is uncertain. It’s an empty ocean. A million miles of sand without a picture of what to expect, what to hope for, how to live.
“Rex?” I hear myself asking.
He looks back at me and I almost don’t know what to say. Perhaps this is a part of me reaching to the man I know will protect us.
“Yeah?” he asks, keeping pace with Indigo. He sees the panic in my eyes, but I put it away fast, not realizing it was trying to get out.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “Your head and your arm, I mean.”
When our helicopter ride out of town left us behind only to crash seconds later, Rex went down hard and was taken hostage by a pack of savages. At the time he was dealing with a gunshot wound to his arm. The gang bangers in the field thought they could get his compliance by cracking him over the head with a rifle. It was a temporary solution to a problem they didn’t know they had: us.
“If you’re thinking we’re in dire straights, big sis, we are. But I’ve survived worse, and I can tell you this: we’ll be okay, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”
“Says the guy who got scratched by a bullet and passed out,” I joke.
“What can I say?” he replies with a grin. “I’m a terrible victim.”
He says this like we’re on some grand Disneyland adventure as opposed to the real life set of Terminator Meets Escape From New York, but in San Francisco. If this were Disneyland, we’d call the ride, “A Trip Through The Apocalypse” and the background music would be harsh and foreboding, and most certainly scored by Nine Inch Nails.
Rex follows up with: “You have that look on your face like you’re wanting to take charge, but don’t know how.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. He knows he’s right. Smiling—casual like it’s coffee shop conversation—he returns his eyes and his focus to the road ahead.
I’m reeling by his complete dismissal, but this isn’t my thing. Survival. I’m strong, but not a born leader. I’m tough and resilient and determined to protect my family at all costs, but I can’t fight, except to shoot one gun reasonably well.
There’s this huge part of me still trying to shoulder back the memories of what just happened: the drones, Gunner’s death, the attack in the field, the EMP…
Everything is replaying in my head. All of it. Just piling on one tragedy after another. For a second, it’s so crippling I find myself falling behind the pack.
When we lost our helicopter ride out of this hellhole and came face to face with some of this city’s more nightmarish residents—scumbags we killed trying not to die or be taken prisoner—the reality of this bitter new existence set in and I got scared. I am scared. Scared for Macy, for Stanton and Rex, for me…
Even now, the thought of finding a new home, gathering up our things by stealing from others, then defending said home like it’s the old west, has my blood curdling. Heightened levels of dread bloom fresh within me, tugging at my resolve, giving me pause.
“You okay?” Stanton says, studying me with concerned eyes. He slows his pace, but I tell him to keep going, that I’m fine even though I’m most certainly not.
If not for the horrors we’ve already witnessed, many of which we were complicit in, this new world would have broken me by now.
I feel myself cracking.
The memories begin to spin, overlapping each other, blurring the details but piling on the trauma and the chaos. I don’t think I can do this.
But you have to…
I must.
They took Rex. They almost killed him. Macy and I were just bodies in their eyes. Future slaves. Vessels by which these creatures hoped to sate their darker, more carnal needs.
A cold stab of fear hits me not for what we escaped, but for what could have happened. What did happen was our group stamped out their group thanks to Indigo, Rex and Macy.
Oh God, Macy.
The one thing I’ve been so afraid of has come true. Am I the only one affected by this? Looking at Stanton, who seems to be pushing on without much emotion, and certainly not one single complaint, I get so mad at him. He knows, though.
He feels it, too.
He sees our future changing, slipping away. He sees how this world might eventually turn our daughter into a monster, or worse, a statistic.
He’s just doing the best he can, I tell myself.
Same as me.
Across the street, which is littered with abandoned cars, a man is trying to kick down a door. Up ahead, a wife is beating on her husband’s shoulder, yelling at him in what sounds like Russian, but he’s somewhere else, ignoring her, just staring straight ahead like there’s nothing in his head but dead space.
Two dogs are running up on us: a pair of brindle-colored pugs with their leashes dragging behind them. We all step out of the way and they hustle by, snorting and panting, and obviously moving toward something with some sort of mystery purpose.
When we come upon the woman beating her husband, she’s fallen to her knees and is sobbing, and he’s just standing there, looking down at her, not sure how to help her.
Hard times make for some damn hard choices, and these times are so trying, so difficult, so terrifying it’s hard to think we have anything left but hard choices. I’m not even sure I’m equipped to live this kind of life. Will I end up like the woman we just passed? Breaking down on Stanton after this life has beaten and bested us? The big problem here isn’t us, though. It’s not even my daughter doing what she did or becoming the monster our young friend Indigo just might be. The problem is that in a pinch, I failed to act as decisively as Indigo did.
You hesitate, you’re dead.
Truth.
Will I die? Here I am, swallowed in fear, lamenting the loss of Macy’s innocence, wondering if I have what it takes to survive and Macy’s up ahead talking with Rex about a life without The Kardashians.
Seeing her taking the end of the world in stride, I shake loose these toxic thoughts and push forward, realizing I can’t hang behind or I’ll drag everyone else back with me. I want to be closer to my baby, my brother. Stanton.
“A life without the Kardashians would be a peaceful world,” Indigo chimes in, expecting a quick response but getting a confused stare from Macy instead.
“Well I like them,” Macy says, a little breathless.
“So it seems,” Indigo replies.
“You don’t?”
“Name one thing they ever did that added to the community, to mankind or to the furthering of a society of impressionable young women looking for a role model,” Indigo challenges almost without expression.
“For starters,” Macy says, “they made it okay to have a big butt.”
Up ahead, I see a smile slowly creep onto Indigo’s face. Macy watches for the response, then grins when she sees the archer’s face light up.
“Yeah,” Rex says, “I’m going to miss the Kardashians, too.”
“Shut up, Rex,” I say, and everyone starts to laugh.
Then Rex halfway busts out with the lyrics of a famous Sir Mix A Lot tune: “I like big butts and I cannot lie…” and that brittle edge of hopelessness no longer feels so cutting. It’s a swift moment that’s sure to pass, but for now, I revel in it.
My gaze jumps from Macy to Rex to Stanton, and then it slides back to Indigo. Here we are, in the middle of hell on earth, surrounded by loved ones and an uncanny savior, and I can’t stop marveling at how swiftly we’re moving into the fierce unknown.
We don’t have anything right now but each other for strength and our determination to live. But with all of us smiling and Rex’s odd sense of humor to thank for that, the more hopeful side of me thinks it might just be enough.
END BOOK 1.5
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THE OPHIDIAN HORDE
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Chapter Thirty-Three
When my brother Rex announced that the flash in the sky could very well be the result of a nuclear EMP counter-strike, Macy wanted to know if the toilets would still flush. I’m worried about the end of the world; she’s worried about where all the poop will go.
Naturally, Rex said no. He said the toilets wouldn’t flush.
He couldn’t say, we’ll see, or maybe. It was a definite and resounding no. As if he hadn’t a thought in his mind about scaring my daughter, his niece.
