Autumn in the City of Angels

by Kirby Howell

  We only had to struggle a few more feet before I saw the shadow of someone jumping out of the plane. Even though he was on the other side of the field, and the light was low, I could tell it was Ben from the glint off his glasses. He’d come back for us. He began to run in our direction.

  The runway was so long that it took a couple minutes before he reached us, and in that time, Daniel taxied the plane in our direction, closing the distance.

  “What the hell happened?” Ben demanded. “Are you okay?”

  “Be careful, he’s been shot,” I cautioned him as he reached to help me with Grey. He gently removed Grey’s arm from my shoulder and helped us start toward the plane.

  “Karl showed up. He wasn’t happy about my public service announcement.”

  I saw Ben’s eyes linger on my arm. Every step seemed to jar my shoulder, and even though I was trying to hold my arm steady against my chest, the pain made me sweat.

  Ben looked at me, concerned. “Do you want to wait here? I’ll come back for you.”

  I shook my head, “Not necessary,” and nodded toward the plane coming to a stop in front of us. Ben and Daniel helped us into the backseat, and, within moments, we were airborne, orange light from the rising sun flooding the plane.

  “There’s an emergency kit under your seat. Can you reach it?” Ben asked me as the plane leveled out.

  “Autumn,” Grey said as I pulled out the small plastic box. His once-crystal blue eyes seemed dull and smoky now, and his head leaned heavily against the wall. He murmured, “...you’re going to have to stop the bleeding.”

  I nodded, willing to take any instruction.

  “Take off my belt,” he whispered. With my bad arm still wrapped around my waist, I leaned forward, gently pushed his navy sweater up over his belt and began unclasping the buckle. I looked up at Grey through my eyelashes and saw him watching me through heavily lidded eyes. I blushed as I pulled his belt through the loops on his jeans.

  “What now?” Grey took it from me and gingerly slung it over his shoulder. He looped it across his chest and motioned for me to fasten the belt under his opposite arm. He instructed me to leave it loose for the moment.

  Using scissors from the kit, I cut through his sweater and the t-shirt he wore underneath. It was my first view of his horrendous wound. Blood seeped from the torn, inflamed flesh. I cringed and looked away.

  “Gauze and tape.”

  I forced my eyes back open and quickly found the items he needed. I folded one of the pieces of gauze into a square like I’d seen in the movies. I made it thick, thinking the padding would help. I handed it to him and began tearing pieces of tape to hold it in place.

  “Can you place the other piece over the exit wound?” He leaned forward slightly. Using the scissors, I took a deep breath and cut more of his sweater away. I remembered telling him the sweater felt like it was a hundred years old. I realized now it probably was.

  “Autumn?” Grey whispered. I’d paused in my work.

  “Sorry,” I hurriedly placed the gauze square over the bloody patch of skin on the back of his shoulder and gently taped it down. I leaned back, worried about the next part. Grey adjusted the belt so it ran over both wounds, then pulled it tight and softly groaned as he fumbled with the buckle. He leaned his head back against the wall again and half smiled at me. His face was pale, and sweat ran down his neck.

  “You gonna be okay, doc?” Ben asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

  “Yes,” Grey replied. Then he asked, “Are you or Daniel wearing a belt? Autumn needs a sling to hold her arm steady.”

  “No, I’m not,” answered Ben. Daniel shook his head to indicate he wasn’t either.

  “Can we use something else?” Ben looked around the small interior of the plane.

  Grey unlatched his seatbelt and adjusted it to its full length. “Hand me the scissors. We need to stop your shoulder from moving too much. It’s going to be bad enough getting it back in the socket.”

  I handed him the scissors, and held the seatbelt while he cut it apart. He twisted around in his seat, and we got it looped across my chest with the ends secured together over my arm to hold it steady.

  “Does it hurt much?” Ben asked. I shook my head, clenching my teeth against the sharp pain. He took the med kit from my lap. He found an emergency ice pack and smashed it against the arm of his seat to activate it, then handed it to me.

  I passed it to Grey and said, “I’m fine. Here, put this on your knee.” His knee was noticeably swollen inside his jeans, but he caught my hand in his and slid the ice pack onto my shoulder. His hand didn’t leave that spot, holding the pack in place. I sighed.

  “You can’t have everything your way,” Grey murmured in my ear. I placed my hand over his on the ice pack, letting him lean back against the seat. His face was pale and he was sweating. I hoped it wouldn’t take much longer to get there.

  Just then, Grey mumbled something I couldn’t hear. I gingerly leaned toward him.

  “I’ll have to go back,” he whispered again, this time clearer.

  My blood froze for a moment. Back where? To The University, I thought?

  “My journals,” he continued, cracking his eyelids open to look down at me. “My journals are in my room at the underground hideout. I’ve been keeping them for years. I have to go back to get them.”

  I breathed a small sigh of relief and touched his arm. “You can go back when you’re better. Just rest now.”

  His eyes slid shut again and after that, it was silent. The sound from the propeller fell into the background, and I barely noticed it. I rested my head against Grey and listened to the sound of his heartbeat. By the time we finished tending each other, Los Angeles had faded away behind us. I regretted not getting to say goodbye to my home, but somehow, I felt like it wouldn’t be the last time I’d ever see it. I trained my gaze ahead to the horizon, waiting and watching.

  It wasn’t long before the imposing structure of a dam loomed before us. Its white walls reminded me of a fortress, and the lake beyond it was its moat. In that moment, I knew we’d be safe here. We flew low over the dam, and I gingerly leaned to look out the window beside me. A large peninsula jutted out into the water northwest of the dam, almost as if it were protecting the dam from the rest of the bay. I could see a cluster of newly built structures just beyond the base of the peninsula. Some looked like houses with yards and gardens; some looked like offices and stores. A network of unpaved roads crisscrossed between the buildings. It looked small, but organized.

  We landed gently on a stretch of highway. Lydia was waiting for us when we landed and got us loaded onto stretchers. Grey had fallen asleep from exhaustion by the end of the flight, and I had a slight moment of panic when they wheeled us into separate rooms at the medical facility. But then Lydia entered through another door, and I had a brief glimpse of Grey. The belt was being removed from around his chest, and he was awake, his face turned toward the door, watching for me.

  I tried to smile so he wouldn’t worry about me, but the door swung shut again and Lydia appeared beside me. She removed the seatbelt from around me, gently took my arm and said, “Brace yourself. This will hurt.”

  Fortiter, I thought and squeezed my eyes shut.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The new town of Hoover was bigger on the ground than it looked from the air. The population was over two thousand, and everyone chipped in. Whatever you could do to help improve the town and keep it running was your job. The main cluster of buildings – offices, stores, the medical center, all built within the past year – sat on a plain sloping down to the shores of Lake Mead.

  Before the plague, this expanse of land was empty except for scrubby creosote bushes and the occasional ground squirrel or canyon wren. A suburb of the nearby town of Boulder City surrounded this area, its houses sitting in the cool shadows of the craggy hills on three sides of the plain. This was where most of Hoover’s residents lived, including me.

  Just about everything in the m
ain town had been built over the past year, and it was growing. Hoover had a mounted police force, a mayor, teachers and mechanics, contractors and engineers, and even running water – everything a new town needed.

  A week after we arrived, I picked my way around puddles on the muddy playground at the school near my house. I was going to visit Rissi and Connie. It was the first day of school for both of them. Rissi was starting the second grade, and Connie was teaching first. I didn’t know yet how I would contribute to Hoover. The school didn’t have a teacher for any high school level classes yet, so I needed to find something else to do. And I had no idea where to start.

  It was an odd feeling, being back in civilization and having a real community. There was power, provided by the dam, and running water. I couldn’t believe a place like this could exist after all of the cruelty I’d seen in the months following The Plague. The people of Hoover welcomed our group after an extensive interview process, where they determined we didn’t have any members of The Front among us. Their safety procedures seemed like paranoia at first, until I realized they were a necessary precaution to protect us all from infiltrators. Over the last year, I’d grown used to fear as a state of being, but now there was little to fear, and I felt free. The possibilities of living a normal life again and doing so with Grey were almost too good to comprehend.

  I adjusted the strap of my sling, which tended to rub against my neck if I moved too much. My shoulder was healing nicely, and I smiled at the thought of seeing Grey soon. He was leaving the medical center this afternoon, and I was going to help him get settled in his new house, across the street from the one I shared with Connie. He was on the mend at a rapid pace, thanks to the E-Vitamin shots Lydia had been slipping him, but was still using a crutch to walk and keeping his arm in a sling to avoid any suspicion among the local doctors. He almost always smelled like citrus when I went to visit him now.

  A familiar squeal from across the playground caught my attention, and I turned to see Rissi running toward me. She’d grown so much since I met her just eight months ago. She jumped gracefully over a large puddle and threw her arms around me.

  “I missed you!” she exclaimed, her voice squeaking.

  I laughed. “But you saw me last night when you came to visit Grey.” We began to walk toward the school building, where Connie was herding a group of kids.

  “But you were too busy kissing to notice me.” Rissi giggled.

  My face burned. That had been embarrassing. Between Lydia, random doctors and other people visiting, Grey and I hadn’t managed to be alone since we’d arrived at the airfield. The previous evening found us alone for the first time in a week, and I was without words. Grey solved the problem by pulling me onto his hospital bed and holding me curled against him. Our lips found each other right about the time our friends walked in. The teasing was relentless. Particularly from Shad, who seemed to think it his duty to give me a hard time. Ben didn’t say much, but he didn’t give us irritated looks anymore. I realized his silence bothered me more than the annoyed looks, though.

  “How’s school today?” I asked Rissi, changing the subject.

  She pouted. “My teacher says I’m behind.”

  “Well, of course you’re behind. You haven’t gone to school for a year. But you’ll work hard to catch up. Won’t you?”

  She sighed and stepped heavily into a puddle, splashing dirty water. “Yeah,” she mumbled.

  “I’ll help you,” I promised, and she smiled.

  “Only if you’re not too busy kissing!” She shrieked and darted away from me as I lunged for her. She streaked across the playground, and I chased her.

  “Don’t strain your shoulder!” I heard Connie yell as we flashed by. Both Rissi and I were flushed, laughing and gasping for breath, when the teachers called the students back inside. It felt good running and feeling the crisp winter air in my lungs. Rissi ran inside, and I jogged to Connie, ignoring the slight pain in my shoulder. The run was worth it.

  I walked her to the door of the school building. “On your way to see Grey?” Connie said. I nodded, and she handed me a bag. “I did the best I could. You can still see where it was cut, but it’s in one piece again.”

  “That’s all that matters. Thank you so much for doing this.” I told Connie I’d see her that evening at home.

  The school was only a couple of blocks from the medical center, and, as I walked, I realized just how much I liked Hoover. It was about as different as it could be from Los Angeles, but there was also something wholesome and real about it. I was amazed at how quickly I felt at home here.

  I admired a beautiful chocolate brown thoroughbred horse as it trotted past me down the dirt street, carrying its owner on an errand. That might have been the thing that made Hoover so romantic to me. Because of the backup of cars in the one small repair shop and the rationing of gasoline, the residents of Hoover used horses for transportation and work. It was like being in one of my mother’s movies, walking down a muddy road, passing horses tied up outside the grocery store. I loved it.

  Grey leaned against the rough fence post that surrounded the medical center, waiting for me. He repositioned his weight on his crutch and smiled when he saw me. When I got closer, I could smell the fresh citrus scent emanating from him. I breathed it in deeply. “Someone’s been taking his vitamins,” I said.

  He smiled and, without saying a word, pulled me against him with his good hand. He kissed my forehead and whispered, “You look beautiful.”

  Naturally, my breath caught in my throat whenever he touched me or whispered to me, and my thoughts broke up like a jigsaw puzzle.

  “Are you ready?” he asked as he offered me his arm. “I thought we’d walk to the dam first, since neither of us has seen it up close yet.”

  I nodded, and we began to walk. “Oh wait,” I said, pulling away and handing him the bag.

  He looked confused for a moment, then opened the bag and pulled out a mass of delicate navy wool. It was his sweater, clean and sewn back together. Grey stared at me, a look of disbelief on his face.

  “Connie did the sewing; I just sanded the buttons to get rid of the bloodstains-” I started, but Grey interrupted me with a kiss. His arms gently slid around me, careful of my shoulder. He pressed his lips against my hair and said, “Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

  I shrugged with my good shoulder. “I know you’ve had it for a while. I thought it must be pretty important to you if you kept it this long.”

  He nodded and opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again and offered me his arm instead. I looped my arm through his. “What were you about to say?”

  “Let’s go see the dam,” he said.

  We walked the entire length of the street and left the buildings, horses and people behind us, taking the short hike through the hills to the dam. When we finally reached the center of the man-made masterpiece, I chanced a look down and immediately stepped back.

  “Whoa, that is a seriously long drop.”

  Alone as we were, he dropped the guise of recovering injuries, leaned his crutch up against the wall of the dam and stepped up behind me without limping. His arms went around me, and he perched his chin on top of my head. In the fresh air, alone with him, I felt like I was under a spell of happiness. I wanted to stay this way forever. He talked tenderly to me as we watched the sun begin its journey to the western horizon. The wind gusted through the canyon, cooled by the surrounding water. I shivered in my thin shirt and then felt soft, warm wool around my shoulders. I looked up at him as he pulled his sweater around me.

  “Won’t you be cold?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “You know I love you more than anything, right?” he said.

  I nodded and said, “I love you, too. You know that?”

  He pulled me closer to him with his arm so that I was right up against his chest. My breath caught in my throat as his lips came down on mine. He pressed me softly against the guardrail, and I felt his hand inch up m
y back and comb through my hair. He kissed his way down my neck and gently along my bad shoulder then suddenly stopped.

  “Good. I needed to hear you say that.”

  “What does that mean?” I replied, my knees shaking from his kiss.

  “It means I need to tell you something. I’ve nearly told you a hundred times already, including that afternoon at The Water Tower.” I stopped and looked at him. His eyes hardened.

  “So tell me,” I said, wondering what could be so important.

  He hesitated, then said slowly, “The University has seen the Crimson Fever before... on another planet.” He stopped for a moment, searching for words.

  “Okay?” I said, confused.

  “It was a planet very different from this one, but it happened the same way, spreading across the planet and killing the entire species. There weren’t any survivors. The virus strain was indigenous to that planet, though, and we’ve never seen anything like it on Earth.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked, chills spreading across my shoulders.

  “It means I don’t believe the Crimson Fever is native to Earth. I believe it was brought here.” He stopped talking but didn’t break his lock with my eyes.

  “What do you mean, ‘brought here’?” I asked, feeling a burning take over my stomach and an ache in my heart.

  “I believe... I believe that somehow we brought it here... that it could have been our fault that Earth was infected,” he said very carefully. He didn’t look away from me, but waited for my reaction.

  “Oh,” I managed lamely. I stared off over the water coursing out of the dam’s channels and asked, “Are you sure?”

  “The chances of it not being us are very slim,” he said. “I’m not sure how it happened, or how it happened so fast. We take very strong measures to isolate any possible contaminates when traveling between planets. This has never happened before, and I’m not sure it’s even possible, but it’s the only source I can think of for the virus strain. I had to tell you so...”