Along For The Ride: And Other Stories

by Martin Alvarez

  “Which animal would I be?” Her words startled him, being the first words in a day that weren’t in his head.

      “Huh?“ He looked up from his torn and muddy shoes and was again surprised, this time to see an orange sky, the sinking Sun setting the broken horde of clouds ablaze. The Sun was their prisoner for a week(roughly, the days seemed to meld together when one only had the Sun to tell them apart).

      “You know, like if I were an animal, which animal would I be?” She stared at him with eyes like clean and pure windows into her electric soul, sparkling despite her muddy face and knotted hair.

      He took another bite of his apple, chewed, swallowed, and took one more before answering. “You wouldn’t be an animal. Come on, let’s finish setting up a fort inside before the Sun sets completely.”

      Inside. A word that was no longer the same. It now meant between a set of walls that were barely standing. Ruins, every building was two and a half, maybe three walls with no ceiling like a bunch of unfinished coliseums. Only there were no gladiators, no lions, no fools to entertain within the walls. The Big Show had already passed, the gladiators– every man, woman, child on Earth– had all given their lives in the grand arena. Few willingly, most not.

      The bombs fell, the bullets flew, the bayonets stabbed and sliced. If any other humans where left, neither Debbie nor Mark knew of them.

      The two met three weeks ago. That was two months after the Ghost bombs fell, their shock waves passing through the walls of whichever buildings remained leaving them as they were, but turning all life within them to ash. Debbie was rummaging through the crumbled halls of a university kitchen when she crossed a corpse laying in a spot where cabinets once were. Dead bodies were something she had very quickly gotten used to seeing. Since this one wasn’t grossly dismembered or as foul smelling as most of the others, she approached it to search for cigarettes.

      After finding a pack of Marlboro menthols in his pocket, she noticed his stomach moving slowly up and down. “Gross! This one already has maggots in him.” She also noticed his head was rested on top of an old, leather-bound book. the words on the book’s spine were faded but she could make out the letters “H P ove raf”. Curious, she reached for the book when suddenly the corpse sat up and grabbed her by the wrist.

      “Zombie!” Debbie grabbed the nearest object– a stainless steel frying pan– and hit him as hard as she could on his head. A loud “twang!”  echoed through the kitchen and the zombie fell back down. When fresh blood trickled down from the spot where she hit him on his head, she realized with a quick jolt of surprise and embarrassment that her zombie was another living person who was just asleep.

      With a gasp she rushed to find a rag and some water for the man’s head. “Oh no Debbie, you would kill the only living person you’ve seen in two months, you dummy. Dummy, dummy, dummy!” She continued to scold herself until she found what she needed.

      The next hour was spent cleaning his forehead, calming him down when he woke up, helping him make a head bandage, and finally introducing themselves.

      “My name is Debbie.” She offered with a smile.

      “Such a sweet name for such a sweet girl.” He said sarcastically as he struggled to tie the bandage knot behind his head.

      “Sorry about hitting you like that. Here, let me tie that for you. So, what’s your name?”

      He chuckled, which was more of a quick puff of air that left his nose. “Zombie.”

      Debbie’s face turned red. “I was alone for a long time, ok? I began to believe I was the only one alive anymore. Everyday I pass by at least ten more dead people, and you looked dead. Who uses a book for a pillow anyway? What’s it about?”

      Remembering the book he grabbed it again, noticing the blood now smeared across the front and deciding it was fitting. “Mark.”

      “Huh? It’s a book about a guy named Mark? Or BY Mark? Is it a Mark Twain book?”

      “My name is Mark.”

      “Oh,” she smiled and offered her hand for a handshake, “nice to meet you.” Since then they traversed the barren ruins of home together.

      Now they were sitting on the steps of a destroyed library. “You wouldn’t be an animal. Come on, let’s set up a fort inside before the Sun sets completely.”

      Debbie noticed Mark had been in a quiet, contemplative state for the past few days as if he were trying to figure out a math problem. She had also noticed he was looking up at the sky more than usual and seemed anxious or even slightly depressed that he couldn’t see the Sun, stars, or his real love, the Moon.

      A few seconds after he got up, Debbie followed him over the loose step-stones and through the twisted steel frame into the library.

      Mark always felt safest inside of libraries– now and long before the war had even started. He never seemed to fit in anywhere else. He felt like an outsider, an intruder even around his closest friends and family. But among books, among the words, thoughts, emotions, and flaws of dead men who voiced their acceptance out to him across the centuries through the pages of a book, he felt at home.

      After their small fort had been built in a corner of the library where two walls still stood, they had a dinner of canned vegetables and SPAM and set out their sleeping bags to get ready for bed.

      “We can take the tarp off. I doubt it will rain tonight.” Mark said, blowing out the candles which gave them light to eat by.

      “Awesome!” Exclaimed Debbie and got up to help him take it down. As they removed the tarp, it was like setting free billions of of fireflies into an empty, dark cathedral. Their phosphorescence sprinkling the darkness with light, their tiny souls filling the lonely sadness with existence.

      Since light pollution was no longer a problem, every single star, planet, far away galaxy that sent its light out across the void was visible to the naked eye again for the first time since the light bulb was mass produced and placed in every building on the planet. Mark hated the light bulb for that very reason and detested the ugliness of such arrogant places as Las Vegas and Paris.

      “A shooting star! Make a wish, Mark.” They both closed their eyes in the soft silvery light. The Moon was still below the horizon but the vast amount of stars provided a dreamlike glow in which they could barely see each other.

      “Ok, there. What did you wish for?” Mark asked, feeling a sense of rejuvenation to be beneath the cosmos again.

      They were laying down now and Mark saw Debbie’s gray silhouette pull her sleeping bag up closer to her chin.

      “I wished for the same thing I wish for every night: that I’ll fall asleep here, in this strange place on this strange new planet and wake up in my own bed. I wished that this would all be a dream– the ruins, the bombs, the war, all of it. Except meeting you, of course, that’s the only thing I can say I’m happy for in all of this. I just miss my family. I miss walking to the store and waving to people I know as they drive by, saying ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘have a nice day’ to the cashier. I miss watching the news or a movie. I miss people, Mark. What about you, what did you wish for?”

      Mark stared into the stars and they stared into him. He thought back to the world that existed only a few months ago and remembered it all. He remembered his small family who barely kept in touch except for the forced phone calls on holidays and birthdays. He remembered the black smoke that noisy buses and cars assaulted his lungs with as they drove by. He thought about all of the pain, suffering, hatred, and ugliness around the world that the news reported twenty-four-seven. He thought about people.

      “Also same as every night: I didn’t wish for anything, I thanked God for the bomb.”

      They sat in silence, golden silence, for a minute or an hour, it was all the same now.

      “So are you going to answer my question?” Debbie turned to look towards Mark. She studied th
e peaks and valleys of his skyward turned face.

      “I already answered you. I said you wouldn’t be an animal.”

      “What would I be then?”

      “Animals kill, animals age, animals wage war. You, Debbie? You would be a river, teeming with life, your presence cleansing, refreshing. Never changing, yet never the same. You would be a tree, turning carbon dioxide to breathable oxygen. Turning bad to good. You would be the wind, your soft touch blowing away pollution and spreading far the seeds of trees and flowers. Do you see? You would be all the things that animals could never be, giving instead of taking. Only erasing pain and making beautiful the scenery by being part of it.”

      Debbie lay silently, watching Mark until she was sure he was asleep. Then she turned to the stars and watched until sleep came for her on the tail of a comet and in her dreams, she too thanked God for the bomb.

  The Final Account Of Dr. Fredrick Morrison

  This is a piece to honor one of the most influential and imaginative writers of fiction, the father of modern horror, and one of my favorite story tellers, Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

      Rest in madness, Old One.