Autumn in the City of Angels

by Kirby Howell

  He caught me off guard. “Where exactly are you from?” I asked, an image filling my mind of a dusty little camp somewhere in the wilderness, inhabited by an emotionless cult that an undercover reporter from Dateline would eventually infiltrate. For a moment, I imagined Grey being interviewed by Brian Williams.

  “A place called Andros.” Grey watched me carefully.

  “Is that in California?” I asked hesitantly. I had never heard of the town before.

  Grey chuckled softly. “No,” he said. “It’s very far from here. I haven’t been back in... a while.”

  “Is Lydia from... Andros too?” My lips had trouble forming around the unfamiliar word. Grey nodded.

  “Do you... did you have family there before The Plague?”

  “...yes,” he said, after a slight pause.

  “I’m sorry...” I whispered.

  “Why?” Grey looked surprised.

  “Didn’t they... aren’t you afraid you lost them to the Crimson Fever?” I asked, confused.

  “No, they’re gone,” he said with a finality that seemed to weigh on him, pulling his shoulders into a defeated hunch. He suddenly looked years older than eighteen.

  “You can’t be sure about that. Maybe only the big cities got hit the hardest. They could still be alive.”

  “No one on Andros was affected by the Crimson Fever.” Grey looked past his tangled fingers to the concrete floor.

  On Andros, I thought? He made it sound like an island or a ship. And if they were all dead, but not from The Plague, what had they died from? It didn’t make sense to me.

  “I thought the Crimson Fever was worldwide?”

  He nodded. “It was,” he said quietly.

  My scalp prickled, and my heart thudded in my chest. My hands felt cold even though the room was warm. Images flew through my head, one by one, seeming to point the way: not knowing how Grey got me home that first night, thinking I’d seen him right before the explosion outside The Water Tower, the injection I saw him taking, his occasional strange choice of words, his knowledge of a practically extinct language, his deep understanding of medicine and how he and Lydia had disappeared out of her room when I was sure I overheard them talking there.

  “Grey?” My voice sounded infinitely small. He looked up at me, blue eyes burning with intensity. “Is Andros... not on Earth?” I asked.

  He stared at me intently for a full ten seconds and then said, “No... it’s not.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I stared at him. He didn’t move. It didn’t feel like he was intentionally lying to me, but I couldn’t wrap my head around what he was telling me.

  I stood up and wandered over to the stacks of books and sat down cross-legged on the floor to look at the titles. Grey was silent behind me. I concentrated on the spines of the books, but I couldn’t focus on the letters and words. I saw colors and fabrics, leather and gilt lettering.

  I felt the air move when he sat down next to me on the floor, and the faint citrus scent washed past me again. It reminded me of the lemon tree at home, and I closed my eyes for a moment, breathing him in and feeling at home.

  “Autumn,” Grey said quietly, “What are you thinking?”

  I touched one of the book spines. The color disappeared where the canvas was cracked, and it looked like the binding was separating from the pages. I focused hard on the title. Experimental Physics. “Your book is falling apart,” I said absentmindedly, grazing a fingertip across the spine.

  “It should be,” he said flatly. “I bought it my sophomore year at Cambridge in 1882.”

  My finger paused on the cracked canvas. My mind whirred. Could it actually be possible? The left side of my brain scoffed at the idea, and I clung to the safety and normalcy of that way of thinking. The right side of my brain, though, was fascinated at the possibilities.

  “Ask me a question. Ask as many as you want. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.” Grey’s voice was strangely insistent.

  I nodded. I had a billion questions, and yet I couldn’t grasp any as they flew around my head. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my mind. It worked. A question I’d been meaning to ask him came to the forefront of my mind, and I blurted out, “What caused that explosion back at The Water Tower?”

  “It was me,” he said.

  “You?”

  “Yes. I created a high-pressure shock wave. Similar to a sonic boom, but not with sound waves.”

  I shook my head, confused. “Wait. Back up. You created it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like you built a... bomb or something?”

  “No, I created it with my mind.”

  I realized my mouth was hanging open slightly, and I shut it quickly.

  Grey continued. “It’s a very common ability where I’m from. It’s a simple exercise of finding matter, any matter, with your mind, and then learning how to force the atoms to expand and contract and then doing it at a rate faster than the speed of sound. In our case, I used the air around us.”

  I looked at him like a dope. I wanted to believe he wasn’t a mad man, but the left side of my brain was winning the wrestling match in my head.

  I stood up suddenly, and then paused, realizing I didn’t really want to go anywhere. But my mind was rebelling, and I needed to get away to think.

  “I’m sorry, I should go. It should be time for breakfast by now. I’m due back in the kitchen soon.” I looked at my wrist. I wasn’t wearing my watch, so I dropped my hand quickly. “I’ll chat with you later, okay?” I said. Grey stared up at me, his mouth open a fraction. I didn’t wait for an answer. I turned and pulled the door open and paused in the doorway. I didn’t look at him when I said, “I just need... some time.” Then I left.

  I tried to ignore the nagging feeling in the back of my mind as I hurried along the hallways to the line forming for breakfast rations. I helped serve for a while and then collected Rissi’s breakfast along with my own and brought it back to our room.

  I sat on my mattress with the door open so I could tell when Rissi and Connie woke up. I couldn’t rest after all that just happened with Grey, so I tried to figure out what date it was. I remembered that Ben and I decided to leave to look for water two days after the New Year. I started there and was able to figure out it should be January 14th.

  My forehead crinkled with concentration. Was that right? So much seemed to have happened in the last two weeks. It didn’t feel real. I was annoyed that my mental project of calculating the date brought my thoughts back to Grey so many times. I rubbed at my temples in irritation.

  “Autumn?” A tiny voice murmured from the doorway. I looked up to see Rissi, her hair rumpled and pillow marks across her cheek. She clutched one of her dolls. I held out my arms to her.

  “Hey, Rissi,” I said as she climbed onto the mattress with me. I tucked the blanket around her and her doll. She was unnaturally still and quiet. I craned my neck to look down at her. She seemed deep in thought. I pulled a comb out of my bag and gently brushed the tangles out of her hair.

  “I like my new friends, but I miss Ben. When’s he coming back?” she asked eventually.

  I didn’t pause my brush strokes. “He’ll be back soon. Tonight or tomorrow, I think.” At least that’s what I hoped for.

  She took a deep breath and gushed out, “I want to go home. It was better there. Ben and you didn’t get mad at each other as much there. And we had holidays, and we could go outside.” She seemed as if this were taking a great deal of bravery for her to say out loud. “I forgot my Molly doll when we had to leave, and I want her. And it’s too dark down here. And I miss my tent.” Her tiny voice wobbled during this last sentence, and my heart broke.

  When this little girl looked back at her childhood, this apocalypse would be what she remembered. She would forget what it was like to go to school with other children, running outside for recess, having her hair combed by her teacher for her school picture and bringing home papers with a big red “A+” at the top.

 
She’d had some joy with me and Ben, but even her tent and her Molly doll were gone now. Though I missed Rissi’s birthday, I could imagine the delight on her face when she opened her present and saw the Molly doll Ben kept for her. I put the comb down and wrapped my arms around her, twisting her around. She wasn’t crying, but looked like she was trying her best to put on her brave face. I looked into her scared eyes and had no idea what I was going to say.

  “Rissi,” I began slowly, “I wish we could go home, too. I wish our parents could come back. I wish none of this had happened. I wish for lots of things. But... but sometimes we just can’t get what we want.” Rissi’s eyes started to fill up with tears, and I knew I was heading in the wrong direction.

  I thought about the few good things that had come from the Crimson Fever. I doubted I would ever have met Connie and Todd, or Ben and Rissi for that matter. Or Grey. “Sometimes bad things have to happen for good things to happen. Like me meeting you. Do you think I would have found you hiding behind a grate in the wall on a normal day before everyone got sick? It was my lucky day when I found you.”

  She only half smiled at me, so I tried again. “Do you remember when Ben made that gross-looking cake? The one that overflowed in the oven? And how he tried to hide how deformed it was by putting extra frosting on it? And the frosting was that pukey green color?” I laughed aloud, remembering Ben defending his mutated bakery creation.

  Rissi laughed, too. “But it tasted sooooo good.”

  “Exactly, Rissi. It looked bad, but it actually wasn’t. Same here. It’s not so bad when you think about it. Sure it’s dark, but we can pretend we’re animals that live underground, you know, safe and snug down in their burrows and tunnels?”

  Rissi nodded. She seemed to be warming to the idea. I continued, “This is where we have to be right now. This is where we’re going to be safe. You want to be in the safest place, right? You want me and Ben to be safe, too?”

  She nodded again. “But why can’t we go home? I want my tent.” A tear trickled down her cheek. I brushed it away and tried to think of something else to say.

  A deep soft voice startled me. “I’ll build you a tent, Rissi.”

  It was him. When I looked up, Grey was standing in the doorway, watching me.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t help but overhear you missed your tent. I got a good look at it the other day when I was there. I could build you something like it down here if you like.”

  Rissi nodded, a smile breaking out on her face.

  “Great. I’ll come back a little later. If that’s okay?” Grey looked at me.

  I somehow found my voice. “Of course.” He smiled at us both and left. The doorway suddenly looked very empty.

  I brought out the breakfast rations I’d picked up earlier. A fiber bar and a small can of tomato juice. Rissi wrinkled her nose at the tomato juice when I opened it for her.

  “You have to drink it. It’ll keep you strong and happy,” I told her.

  “Not happy,” she said, sniffing the juice.

  “Well, strong then. And healthy, which is important. You know that.”

  We nibbled our breakfast in silence, eating slowly, trying to make the small bars last longer. I caught Rissi trying to switch her fuller can of juice with my almost empty can. I took both and poured some of hers into mine so they were equal.

  “I’ll race you to see who can finish first.” I knew that would spark her competitive nature, so we clinked the aluminum cans together and drank as fast as we could. I let her win.

  Grey appeared not long after we finished. He knocked on the doorjamb, and Rissi squealed when she saw the bed sheet he’d brought for her tent. It had horses galloping across it. She began to direct him in building it, and I couldn’t help laughing as Rissi bossed him around. He complied politely, asking her important questions like how tall she wanted it to be and where the front door should be. She considered all the questions seriously before answering.

  Thoughts wiggled in my mind like a crowd of baby birds in their nest. Could Grey’s story be possible? Or had the pressure he’d been under during and after the Crimson Fever broken him and driven him insane?

  “Looks like you could use some light in there,” Grey said after the tent was up. He pulled out a small, plastic electric lantern and clicked it on as he handed it to Rissi. She set it on the floor inside the tent and looked around at the fabric horses surrounding her. She smiled, and I knew she would be okay.

  Connie stopped by to walk with us to lunch. Rissi proudly showed off her tent, and Connie told her she’d teach her how to play gin rummy after we ate.

  “I should check on Shad while I’m here,” Grey said, “though he seemed to be doing just fine this morning. You’re taking exceptionally good care of him, Connie.”

  “Just doing what you told me to,” Connie replied.

  Grey smiled, his gaze lingering for a moment on my face, and then he disappeared into Connie’s room. My heart thudded as I remembered his face so close to mine this morning. How his hands had tangled in my hair and the warmth of his breath on my cheek.

  “Autumn!” I heard Connie call my name, chuckling.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Jeez, where were you? Another planet?” Connie laughed. They were already several steps ahead of me down the hall.

  The sudden blush that flooded my cheeks drained out at her comment. I hurried to catch up with them.

  “Grey certainly is a fine young man. If I were fifteen years younger...” she laughed, shaking her head. “He seems quite taken with Rissi. With both of you actually.” Connie looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

  She noticed? I suddenly wanted to ask what details she’d noticed, but I forced myself to say, “There aren’t many kids left. I suppose it’s important to make sure they’re happy.”

  Connie only murmured, “Mmm-hmm. I think he’s paying special attention to her for you, though.”

  I wanted to confide in Connie, but I needed to keep my conversation with Grey to myself for now. He was either as crazy as the homeless people at the Santa Monica Pier, or he was from another planet. Both were bad qualities for potential boyfriends.

  We stood in line and collected our bowls of soup. Connie talking about Shad and how well he was doing, despite the severity of his injuries, when suddenly, a shout echoed across the room. The scouting party was back! I grabbed Rissi’s hand and raced to the throng of people gathering at the door. I jumped a few times to see if I could glimpse Ben above everyone else. Then I saw him being ushered in the door with the rest of the scouts. I was instantly relieved.

  “Ben!” I cried, waving and jumping up and down. He glanced in our direction, searching, and found me. It wasn’t possible for him to smile any broader, but his eyes lit up when he saw us waving. He made his way over and grabbed us both in a bear hug.

  “Man, I missed you guys!” Ben laughed and looked down at me, still beaming. His tanned face was dirty, there was dust in his hair, and his clothes were filthy, but he didn’t appear to be hurt or bleeding anywhere.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Totally. It was a great scout. We found a way to the Hoover Dam, and oh man, you won’t believe what else.” Ben removed his glasses and tried to wipe them on his shirt, but only managed to smear around the dirt.

  “What? Tell me.” I wanted to shake him. It was unlike him to hold out on news for dramatic effect. He grinned back at me, lording his newfound power.

  “You’re about to find out.” He pointed over the crowd to Todd, who looked just as dirty as the rest of the returning scout members. Ben leaned close and whispered into my ear. “You’re gonna love this.”

  Todd climbed up on a metal folding chair that creaked dangerously under his weight. He balanced himself with a hand against the wall behind him and spoke in his deep, booming voice, “All right, people! Can everyone hear me?” The room silenced. “It was a very successful scout. We were able to confirm there is a group at the Hoover Dam, and as far a
s we can tell, they’re good people, and they’re more than happy to take us all in.”

  I heard a few people gasp and shout questions over the chattering crowd, “Are you sure they aren’t like The Front? How are we supposed to get there?”

  Todd held out his free hand to calm everyone. “One at a time, folks. First off, we won’t be walking the entire way. We just need to make it to Whiteman Field in Pacoima, then me and Daniel, and a couple of other folks who can fly, will be taking groups of people to the settlement. We got one plane up and running, and The Hoover Settlement is sending a couple under the cover of night to help with transports. As for the people there, they appear to be peaceful. They’re farming, raising animals, building houses and teaching school.” He paused a moment, allowing the information to sink in before taking a deep breath and continuing. “We also found out why The Front’s been so quiet lately. It’s because they tried to take the dam.” I heard gasps and murmuring at the revelation. “Looks like they wanted control over the power source, too. The Hoover Settlement fought The Front off... and won. The Front’s been weak since the skirmish. If there’s ever been a time to flee, it’s now, before they recoup their numbers.”

  An excited energy surged through the crowd of people, and a small flicker of hope came to life inside my chest. Maybe we wouldn’t be hiding in a basement for the rest of our lives. Maybe Rissi would get to attend school.

  I looked up at Ben, smiling, and, when I looked down at Rissi, hugging tightly to his leg, I noticed Grey out of the corner of my eye, standing right behind us. I suddenly felt his presence strongly and became hyperaware of his body only inches from mine. I chanced a look and found his blue eyes sparkling and staring right at me.

  I quickly looked down at the ground. I don’t know what made me think of it, but it suddenly occurred to me that in those first few days of The Plague, while I was cowering in my penthouse apartment, Grey was probably in the middle of all those dying people at the hospital, trying unsuccessfully to save them. He had the added torment of those people on top of losing everyone in his life except for Lydia.