by Kody Boye
“Cry on me,” Steve whispered.
“What?”
“I said cry on me. Do it, you little fucker, because if you don’t do it, I’m going to do it for you.”
The moment Desmond’s face fell against his chest, Steve began to cry.
I’ve lost nothing, he thought, stroking Desmond’s hair, yet he’s lost everything he could have ever had. How can he be so strong?
Bowing his head, Steve closed his eyes and let the tears run free.
* * *
“So,” Rose said, heaving a box of canned goods off a shelf and turning her eyes on Kevin. “Now that you’ve heard my story, what’s yours?”
“Sorry?”
“Your story,” she said, crouching down to wipe dust from the box’s surface. “You know, where you came from, how old you are, your family.”
“Minnesota,” Kevin said, “grew up in the Walker area. Thirty-nine. Wife wanted to get the family started early, so we had our first kid when I was only twenty-one.”
“How many children do you have?”
“Thruh… um… two.”
Kevin reached up to wipe something off his forehead, then turned as though taking note of the aisle they were in.
Rose pushed herself to her feet and grabbed another box of goods. Though she hadn’t been around the man for more than thirty minutes, she could already tell that he had more than a few loose bolts in the overall machine. The fact that he’d started to say something about his children, then stopped made her reconsider the question she’d just asked, so much so that she stopped reaching for the third box near the back of the shelf.
Did he lose one of his children?
Of course he had. It was ignorant to think that he hadn’t, but then again, she’d been with people who had sworn left and right they hadn’t lost a single thing. Sure, they’d said, I lost my million dollar home and my farm in the hills, but I didn’t lose anything important.
What was important in this day and age? Friends, family, children?
I know what’s important, she thought, tearing the box from the back of the shelf. I damn well better if I’m staying with them.
“You mind if I ask you something, Kevin?”
“What?” Kevin asked.
“You stuttered when I asked how many children you had.”
He sighed. “That.”
“May I ask what happened?”
“It’s hard to explain,” the older man said, looking down at the boxes before them. He craned his neck back to look in the aisle behind them, gestured her forward, then started forward himself, his long legs allowing him a much wider range of movement than Rose’s shorter ones. “You got a minute?”
“We’ve got all the time in the world as far as I’m concerned.”
“After I left Minneapolis with my boys, we went to the old family cabin up near Walker. It was far enough out of town and deep enough in the woods that I figured we’d be safe there, that we’d have our own happy little life at the end of the world. Little did I know that would be the exact opposite.”
“What happened?”
“Sometime between the time we got up there and the time a Native American man named Eagle stumbled across my property, Jessiah was bitten by his horse. I didn’t even know she was still alive up until the end, when he confessed on his deathbed that he was just worried and wanted to help her.”
“Wait,” Rose said, grabbing Kevin’s arm and tightening her hold on his wrist to get him to stop. “Did I just hear you right?”
“Pardon?”
“You said he was bitten by his horse. I heard that correctly then?”
“You heard it plain as day, ma’am.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means that whatever happened to that horse was happening to my son,” Kevin sighed. He bowed his head and kicked a dented can down the aisle. “I know what you’re thinking, Rose, but let me tell you, I thought the exact same thing. I thought that it was impossible for the virus—germ, parasite, whatever the fuck it is—to jump species, but I was wrong; so wrong, in fact, that I watched my son’s skin pale to the color of a fresh pearl and his eyes sink into the back of his head until all I could see was darkness.”
“What happened to your son, Kevin?”
“Can you promise me something?”
“What?”
“If I tell what happened, will you keep it between us? I don’t want anyone else to know what happened, especially not my children. They’re too young and full of life to know what happened to Jessiah the night before he died.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Rose said. “I swear it.”
“Swear it like you mean it.”
“I swear on my best friend’s grave that I will never tell anyone.”
“The night Jessiah died, he was in so much pain that he could barely move, let alone speak. I knew from the moment I sat next to him that I couldn’t let my son continue living the way he was. He’d been in bed for a week before I even decided it was best to end his life. He could barely eat anything. When Eagle was still alive, he’d been mashing food to pulp or liquefying everything because Jessiah couldn’t keep anything down.” Kevin paused. “That night, Rose, he said his stomach hurt, then he reached up to hold my hand. His joints…goddammit! They were so swollen that he could barely even move his fingers. My son—my seventeen-year-old son—couldn’t even hold my hand without being in pain.”
“It’s not your fault,” Rose said, stepping forward. “You couldn’t have done anything.”
“Which is the most painful thing about it,” Kevin said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Eagle mixed a fatal dose of herbs in with his chicken broth so I wouldn’t have to watch him suffer anymore. Oh God, Rose…I couldn’t even bear to watch him die. I sat in the living room with my two healthy children for ten minutes while Jessiah drank his broth, fell asleep, and died.”
At his story’s final climax, Kevin fell to his knees and sobbed.
With nothing more to do than stand and watch an old man suffer, Rose crouched down, kneeled before Kevin and took his hands in hers.
Each hot tear that fell on her skin only served to remind her how much she had lost.
All my friends, she thought. My horrible, ugly mother, my brothers…
They, too, were gone.
As Kevin’s sobs began to quicken and echo across the canned foods aisle, Rose too began to cry.
* * *
“You guys all right?” Erik asked, setting a bag of animal crackers before the two children.
“We’re fine,” the youngest boy said.
“We don’t need a babysitter,” the eldest, Arnold, said.
“You do when your dad says you need one,” Erik replied, seating himself on the couch across from the boys. “Don’t take it out on me.”
“We’re not.”
“To me, it feels like you are.”
“Our brother just died, asshole. What do you expect?”
I can’t believe I’m letting a fourteen-year-old boy get away with calling me an asshole.
Though he was capable of and more than willing to call the boy out on his language and for disrespecting someone, he chose not to. Instead, he watched Arnold’s face for any slight change—a curl of the lip, an irregular bat of an eye, a twitch in his cheek. When he didn’t find any, he sighed, leaned back and closed his eyes.
Almost immediately, his mind flew almost three-quarters of a way across the Pacific Ocean to an island he hadn’t been to for years.
Guam.
Beautiful, tropical, with shores of diamond-white sand and sunsets you could die for: it was, in essence, one of the most beautiful places on Earth, at least in his mind. He and Jamie had gone there for training years ago and had never wanted to leave, despite the burdens of war and everything else that was going on. It was a home away from home, a land of marvelous wonder, and each and every time he thought about it he smiled.
Guam.
As he sat there, pupils dilat
ing and eyes flickering beneath their lids, memories so clear and vivid he could nearly touch them began to flood over his vision. Running across the shore in only his sandals and board shorts, boys his age and even younger chasing after him; lizards slinking in the weeds; birds cawing from the canopies of palm trees and monkeys screaming from their homes—all of this and more continued to bombard him, filling him with a sense of happiness he hadn’t felt since the day he was told his unit would be stationed there for a year and a half.
Gentlemen, the commanding officer had said. Welcome to your new home.
“Hello?” a voice asked.
“What?” he replied.
“I thought you were supposed to be babysitting us.”
Erik opened his eyes. Arnold stood before him, his stern but harrowing gaze looking down at him. He leaned forward as the boy took a few steps back. “I fell asleep.”
“No use in you being here if you can’t stay awake,” the boy snapped.
“Look,” Erik sighed. He set his hands on his knees and leaned forward, taking extra care to soften his gaze so he wouldn’t upset the younger of the two boys. “I’m sorry I’m such a hardass, guys, but I know what you’re going through.”
“No you don’t,” Arnold replied. “You have no fucking idea.”
“And what makes you say that?”
“Because you didn’t lose your brother.”
“Think again, kid, because I lost my brother when I was the same age as you.”
Arnold’s eyes widened. Jason, who had succumbed to his nerves a few minutes before, stopped rocking on his heels. He, too, watched Erik with a sense of awe and understanding that the older man found hard to take.
All it takes is a good slap in the face to show you just how much someone can be like you.
“You…lost your brother?” Arnold echoed. “When you were my age?”
“Yeah,” Erik replied. “My brother was only seven when he died from Leukemia.”
“That’s cancer,” Mark said. “Right?”
“Right, Mark, Leukemia: a bone marrow cancer. I watched my little brother die right before my eyes, which is probably the exact same thing you two saw when your brother died. You know what I did? Huh?”
“What?” Arnold asked, voice low and without its previous animosity.
“I started doing drugs. I found any prescription pill I could in the house and started sneaking them. Not too many at a time, but just enough so I wouldn’t get caught. And before you even begin to think about it, don’t think what I did helped me in any way. Drugs are never the answer.”
“Why did you take them then?”
“Because I had no one else to go to,” Erik said. “Because I had no one who understood my pain.”
“Erik?” Mark asked. “When does it stop?”
“What?”
“The hurting.”
“Never,” Erik sighed, a tear slipping out the corner of his eye. “It never stops hurting, buddy. You know why? Because there’s no cure for someone dying on you.”
Neither child said a word.
Erik set his eyes on the far wall and sighed when a picture of the family, all four whole, looked back at him.
These poor kids.
They would never lead normal lives. Never would they return to school to kick the ball or jump the rope, climb the ladder or lift the weights, nor would they likely ever find someone to make their complete part even fuller. They would never graduate from school, attend college or flip burgers to pay off student loans, and not once would they have to worry about paying rent or mortgage. Most of all, they would never have the chance to be free, like birds outside their nests when their mothers first taught them to fly.
In the end, they would probably never fully recover from their brother’s death.
Hopefully—hopefully—it wouldn’t tear them apart.
* * *
Dakota lifted a packet of watermelon seeds and examined them in the pale yellow light streaming through the dirty greenhouse windows. “Where do you plan on putting these once we get back?”
“In the windows,” Jamie replied.
“You plan on putting watermelon seeds in the windows?”
“Not in them, below them.”
“You said in the windows.”
“Don’t get all technical on me, babe. We’ll have to start growing our own food sooner or later. The canned shit isn’t going to last forever.”
“I know,” Dakota said. “It just doesn’t seem worth it.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Trying to grow something new from something old.”
“New things can always come out of the old,” Jamie said, crossing the room. He set a hand in the small of Dakota’s back and leaned forward to look at the pack of watermelon seeds. “See these seeds, babe?”
“They’re in my hand, Jamie. Of course I see them.”
“I know, but do you really see them?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The vine, Dakota. The plant. The fruit. Do you see it?”
“I…Jamie, what are you talking about?”
“I see it, Dakota. I see it growing in our front yard and feeding us after a long, hot day of work. You might not be able to see it right in front of your eyes, but I see it.”
A twig snapped somewhere behind them.
Jamie and Dakota spun, guns drawn and poised.
A black-skinned humanoid with dark eyes stood outside in the orchard, arm stretched toward an apple tree shadowing the path leading out of the greenhouse.
“What…the…fuck?” Jamie breathed, lowering his gun.
The creature tilted its head, blinked, then reached for the single apple hanging from the end of a branch. Like a child set upon the forbidden prizes of its parents’ closet, it grasped the fruit with its thin, bony fingers. A simple tug was all it took to free the grail from its holy perch.
When the apple hit the ground with an audible thump, the creature groaned.
Dakota stepped forward, lowering his gun to his side.
“Dakota,” Jamie warned, “don’t.”
Not bothering to heed his boyfriend’s request, Dakota walked toward the tree, crouched down before the creature and extended his fingers to grab the apple. Once firmly in his hand, he stood, jumping when he realized how close he’d come to the humanoid.
Don’t be afraid, he thought, slightly mystified as the creature’s fruity breath entered his nose. If it were a zombie, it would’ve already hurt you.
Then again, how was he to know whether or not this thing—this zombie—was actually docile? It was clearly no tiger bent on ripping his throat out, or it would already have done so, but that didn’t necessarily make it a lamb either.
“Hello,” he managed.
The creature blinked.
Dakota lifted his arm and extended the apple toward it. “You dropped it,” he said. “Go on, take it. It’s yours.”
“Uh,” the thing grunted.
It took the apple from Dakota’s hand just in time for Kevin and Rose to enter the greenhouse from the corridor branching into the gardening center behind Jamie.
“What the hell?” Rose breathed.
Kevin merely stared.
Not sure what to think at the sudden appearance of two new people, the black-skinned humanoid took a few steps back and situated itself beneath the dipping branches of the apple tree. It stood there, watching them with eyes that could no longer be seen, before lifting its hand and taking one large, meaty bite out of the apple.
“What is this thing?” Rose asked, drawing a gun from her side.
“It’s what Steve, Erik and Ian saw on the way up here,” Jamie said, lowering his gun, but not stowing it from view. “At least, I think that’s what it is.”
“What else could it be?” Dakota asked. “It’s obviously not a zombie.”
“Tell it to that thing,” Rose said.
“It hasn’t attacked us yet.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Dakota’s right,” Kevin said. “It means us no harm.”
Rose opened her mouth to speak, but stopped abruptly. At first Dakota wasn’t sure what for, but a moment later, he understood. Kevin’s skin had gone completely pale—some strange, pearlescent shade across his sun-weathered face—while his eyes had lightened to an odd shade of yellow. His fingers trembled and his teeth began to chatter as he stared at the creature as if the devil had come to Earth.
“Kevin?” Jamie asked.
“I’m…ok,” the older man said.
The humanoid tilted its head.
Light from the far window illuminated its eyes just enough to make the twin coals sparkle.
A short moment later, Kevin burst into tears.
“No!” he wailed, taking a few steps back. “It’s not…it can’t…NO! NO NO NO!”
“What the hell is wrong with you!” Dakota cried.
“Get him out of here!” Jamie called. “Someone get him the fuck out of here!”
Dakota grabbed Kevin’s arm and tore him out of the room.
When he looked back to see what was going on, the humanoid was gone.
“What the fuck was that about?” Rose asked as Jamie secured the last box of canned goods into the back of the truck.
“I don’t know,” Dakota replied, wiping a drop of snow from his forehead. “He wouldn’t stop ranting. I couldn’t make out what he was saying.” Dakota sighed, waiting for Jamie to walk around the truck to join them. When he did, Dakota offered a slight smile. “Everything tucked in?”
“Everything’s tucked in,” Jamie nodded. “I’m not sure if we should keep going though, at least not today.”
“Why?”
“Because of Kevin.”
“Fuck him,” Rose said. “I had my moment with him earlier too, but at least I didn’t break down and start screaming.”
“Wait,” Jamie said, raising a hand. “Moment?”
“He started crying. I wouldn’t call it hysterically, but it was close enough. At least he wasn’t wailing like he did back there.”
“What do you propose we do then? Keep going and leave him in the truck?”
“That’s exactly what I’m proposing, Jamie. We can’t let one person jeopardize everyone else.”
“She’s right,” Dakota said. “As much as I hate to admit it, we’re running low on food. We’re feeding ten people, J. We have to keep going.”
