Monster Island

by David Wellington

  One girl—one of the youngest, her name was Leyla, I think—wandered along the merchandise racks, one hand holding the strap of her AK-47, the other flipping through the various CDs on display. Her lower lip curled down or up as she read the titles and sometimes she would bend at the waist as if desperately trying to contain the urge to jump up and down in excitement at finding some particularly popular group. Watching her made me think of Sarah. Leyla might be a good deal older and much more dangerous but she still thrummed with spirit, with the barely-controlled energy I had come to adore in my daughter.

  Sarah never felt so far away as then.

  “There’s nothing more that I can do for her,” Gary told me, peeling off a pair of latex gloves. I looked over at Ifiyah and saw that she was sleeping or at least passed out. My mind had been wandering.

  Gary sat down on the floor and peeled open a piece of beef jerky. Chewing idly on it he stared at me until I began to feel the silence between us turn into something that had to be tamed. It was Gary who spoke first, though. “Why did you come to New York?” he asked. “Did you have family here?”

  I shook my head and peeled myself away from my navel-gazing. It wasn't easy: I had a powerful urge to just sink into myself and shut out the world. “My parents died years ago. It’s funny—at my Mom’s funeral I remember thinking how badly I wanted her to come back.” I glanced toward the windows. “I guess you should be careful what you wish for, huh?”

  “Christ, you’re so hardcore,” Gary said, rolling his eyes. “Relax a little.”

  I nodded and squatted down next to him. I realized I was hungry and gratefully took one of his plastic-wrapped food-like snacks. “Sorry. I guess I’m scared. No, we came to Manhattan looking for medical supplies. The President-for-Life of Somalia has AIDS but anti-retrovirals just aren’t available in Africa right now.”

  “What’s in it for you?”

  I took Sarah’s picture from my wallet but I didn’t let him touch it, not with those dead hands. I showed it to him and then stared at it for a while myself. “She and I get full citizenship in one of the safest places on Earth.” In the picture Sarah, aged five at the time, petted the nose of an unaccountably docile camel. The picture didn’t show what came next—the camel’s wet sneeze, little Sarah’s shrieks as she ran all over a camp full of nomads who smiled and clapped their hands for her and offered her fruit. That had been a good day. I always tend to think of our life in Africa as one long horror story—an occupational hazard, I guess—but there had been so many good days.

  I realized with a start that I'd been ignoring Gary for minutes while I thought those thoughts. How rude of me. “I’d like to rest a while, if you don’t mind,” I told him. I wasn’t tired so much as so introspective it was becoming difficult to focus on anyone else. He obliged by scuttling off to a dusty corner of the store where he could chew on his sticks of meat in peace.

  For my part I turned to look out the window—not at the gathered dead people, I was barely aware of them but instead at the Empire State Building, clearly visible above the trees at the north end of Union Square. The iconic skyscraper seemed to just hover there detached from the world. I wondered what if anything you would find in its uppermost stories now—a hell of a walk, since the elevator wouldn’t be running, but worth it perhaps. What kind of safety, what manner of serenity might still exist up there? I’d visited the observation deck plenty of times when I was a kid and I knew you could see the entire city from up there but in my musing nothing was visible but long icy sweeps of cloud, white rarefied ribbons of nothing at all in particular. A veil between me and the filth and strife on the surface.

  I’m told this kind of detachment is common among soldiers in combat zones. In the aftermath of a perilous fight the mind shuts down its faculties one by one and drifts—perhaps endlessly reliving the moment when a squadmate caught a bullet, perhaps trying to remember all the details of the chaos once it was past, perhaps just—as mine was doing here—wandering without thought or feeling at all. There’s even a name for this phenomenon, the “Thousand Yard Stare”, this kind of temporary mindlessness. Modern medicine sometimes refers to it as “Combat Stress Reaction.” Doctors are trained to look out for it. Sometimes it's healthy, just a purging of all the encrusted fear and bloodlust but sometimes it can be a sign of incipient mental illness. Usually a victim snaps right out of it as soon as a new task or duty presents itself. Sometimes soldiers drift in and out of it for the rest of their lives—that’s called “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” which everyone knows about.

  It seemed to me then a pleasant enough way to escape the reality we were in. Nothing pressing presented itself, no duty I had to perform. Idleness would have proved a breeding ground for doubts and fears and now that we were safely (if hopelessly) ensconced there was nothing to do but wait—wait for the dead people outside to rot away. Wait for one of the girls to have a brilliant idea. Wait for all of us to starve to death. I watched the light change, the Empire State transforming from a grey edifice to a ruddy obelisk to a stroke of black paint across the starry blue sky as afternoon gave way to evening gave way to unlit night.

  In time I slept and I dreamed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Baryo,” the girl, the commander of the girls, moaned, stirring in her sleep. Gary had secured her to a padded office chair with his own belt so that she wouldn’t fall out if she went into convulsions.

  He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t—not quite yet. He knew she was dying and he knew what he would see if he turned around and looked at her and he didn’t want to see it. Instead he looked out through the glass at the crowd of the dead there. They pressed up just as tightly against the windows as before but over the last few hours their desperation had slackened a bit. Not that they would be any less hungry, of course—but night, and darkness, seemed to mellow them a little. They didn’t need to sleep. Gary knew that firsthand. Yet some kind of ingrained memory of their lives must be telling them that when the sun went down it was time to rest. It would be fascinating to study their behavior firsthand, Gary thought. What an opportunity to do science! The thing about sarcasm, of course, is that it’s wasted when you’re talking to yourself.

  “Daawo,” she said, behind him. He started to glance over his shoulder. Stopped himself in time.

  He would have plenty of time to live among the dead and learn their ways, anyway. It had become clear to him that the Somalis wouldn’t take him with them when they left. Of course they wouldn’t—he was undead! Yet some sort of bizarre vestigial hope of rescue had been swelling in him every since he saw their boat out on the Hudson. In the heat of his capture and then the battle that followed he hadn’t been able to think clearly but now, now… there was no escaping it. No matter how much he helped them, sucked up to them, wheedled his way into their hearts. Well. He would be lucky to get a pat on the back. More likely a bullet to the forehead would be his recompense for all his good service.

  “Maxaa? Madaya ayaa i xanuunaya… gaajo.”

  Gary turned around and looked. The girl’s face had turned the color of cigarette ash and her eyes were protruding from her head. He bent down and lifted the blanket off her legs. They had swollen up so much he could barely tell where her knees used to be.

  “Canjeero,” she said, plaintive. “Soor. Maya, Hilib. Hilib. Xalaal hilib. Baryo.”

  The infection had spread. It would be coursing through her body now, attacking her tissues wherever it could get in. When it spread to her heart and her brain she would die. He could feel the heat radiating from her face. No, not heat. Something else. A sort of energy, but not anything truly palpable. Like the vibration you feel when a heavy truck rumbles by outside. Or the way your skin crawls when you know someone is walking right behind you but you can’t see them. A phantom sensation, barely liminal but there if you reached for it.

  Gary reached.

  “Fadlan maya,” the girl moaned, as if she could sense what he was doing. Then, angrier: “Ka tegid!” He didn
’t know the words but he could guess the meaning. She wanted to be left alone. Just give me a second, he thought, knowing he could use some work on his bedside manner. Still, he had to know.

  He didn’t so much study her with his eyes or nose or ears but with something else—the hairs on the back of his arms, maybe, which was standing up or the skin behind his earlobes that tingled with anticipation. Some part of his body was responding to this weird energy she was putting off. It made his toes curl. Energy, spark, pranja, vibes—whatever you wanted to call it. It coiled around her and spun off into the air like smoke or like embers exploding out of a bonfire. It warmed his skin where it touched him, irritated him a little in a good way.

  To understand a little better he stepped over to where Dekalb and the other, healthy girls were sleeping, wrapped in their colorful woven mats. He stilled himself and tried to make himself as absorbent as possible. The energy was there, in all of them, but it was very different—a compact mass of it, pulsing on a low register, vibrating like a drum. Dekalb had a little more of it—he was bigger than the girls—but the energy contained in the girls felt more vibrant, more exciting somehow.

  “Waan xanuunsanahay,” the wounded girl muttered.

  Gary returned to her, squatted before her. Whatever this energy was—and Gary knew, knew with certainty that it was her life—it was leaking from her. Draining away. She would be dead within the hour, judging by how little of it was left in her. She would go to waste. What a strange thing to think, but there it was. She would die and she would go to waste.

  Gary backed off and tore open the plastic wrapping of another slim-jim. Chewed on it pensively. He couldn’t—he shouldn’t look at her anymore, it was giving him bad ideas. He could control himself. It was one of the first things he’d said to Dekalb. He could think for himself. He didn’t have to obey every passing whim. That had been the point of the respirator, of the ice-filled bathtub. He had kept his mind, the rational part of himself. His ability to make plans and decisions.

  He pressed one hand against the the windows. The dead outside glanced at his hand for a moment, then went back to pressing their faces against the glass, staring at the people inside. Back to wanting, to needing. He was like them, in so many ways, but he had this one difference. His willpower. His will. He could resist any urge if he tried hard enough.

  “Waan xanuunsanahay. Hilib.”

  He considered leaving, going out into the throng out there—they wouldn’t hurt him, he didn’t think. He was useless to them. Nothing that could concern them. He didn’t know how he could open the door, however, without letting hundreds of them push their way inside before he could get out and close the door behind him.

  There was just no way out. He was stuck in here—trapped, with the rest of them.

  “Biyo,” the girl begged. “Biyo!”

  Maybe, he thought, maybe her cries would wake the others. Maybe Dekalb would wake up and realize he’d forgotten to post a guard. Maybe the girls would wake up and take care of their commander, give her what she needed. Maybe they would put her out of her misery. But they didn’t even stir.

  He ate another slim-jim with shaking hands but it wasn’t hunger that had him so agitated, not the kind of hunger that the meat could quench, anyway.

  “Takhtar! Kaalay dhaqsi!” The girl sounded almost lucid. Gary rushed to the far side of the store, to the manager’s office. He found the closet and shut the door behind him. Sitting on the floor with his head between his knees he pressed his hands against his ears.

  It would be alright. He could control himself. It would be alright.

  Chapter Twenty

  In my dream I was driving.

  Big car, eight cylinders probably. Leather interior, chrome on the wheels. Hell, let’s give it tailfins. A big-voiced throaty roar whenever I stepped on the gas and one of those radios with a luminous needle that rolled back and forth across the ozone layer scratching for hits. My hands on the scalloped steering wheel were huge and strong and brown.

  It was night, and I was driving through the desert. Moonlight picked out the brush and the weeds and the rolling hills of sand and the dead. It was dark inside the car except for that luminous needle and the reflections it made in Sarah’s eyes. Inside, in the dark Sarah looked just like Ayaan but it was Sarah. It was Sarah. Outside the dead were running alongside the car, keeping up pretty well even though the speedo was pushing ninety. I poured on a little more speed and saw Helen smiling at me from the left, her legs pumping madly so she could match velocities with us. Her teeth fell out. Her skin peeled away, she was running so fast and soon she was nothing but bones but still running. She waved and I nodded back, one big round elbow hanging out my open window. My body rocked as the car just rumbled along and my dead wife's skeleton kept up with an easy lope. One hand on the wheel, one out the window, feeling the breeze.

  “Dekalb,” Sarah said, “iga raali noqo, but what’s that?” She was staring at my hand on the wheel.

  I switched on the dome light and saw my shirt was covered in blood. Great pools of it filled my lap, stained the leather of the seat beside me. “Hell, girl, that’s nothing,” I drawled. “Just a little fluid. Nothing to worry your pretty little head about.” Her pretty little head, yeah. I smiled over at Sarah and grasped her ear between my thumb and index finger. She was the last living thing anywhere and she was good and bright and warm, she felt so warm as I tore the ear right off the side of her head and reached for another handfull.

  I woke in sweat. I opened my eyes but there was nothing to see—without power Manhattan was as dark at night as the depths of the country. Darker since the skyscrapers blocked out even the starlight. I lay on my side, stiff and uncomfortable and chilled to the bone. Something wet and sticky had pooled under my hand—sweat, perhaps, or maybe the dream had been so disturbing I soiled myself. Nasty.

  I sat up slowly with a groan and flexed my knees to try to get some circulation back in my legs. I thought I could hear something moving nearby but I presumed it was just the dead outside, waiting for us to come out and be eaten. Ignoring it I rose to my feet. There had been a bathroom next to the manager’s office and I went there, careful not to step on any of the sleeping girls. It wasn’t easy—my eyes had adjusted to the darkness but there was still barely enough light for me to discern individual shadows in the gloom. I urinated noisily into the dry toilet and then, despite the obvious fact that the water couldn't still be turned on I reached out for the lever in the murky darkness and flushed. Strangely enough it worked. I don’t know what kind of water system Manhattan has but it must be a marvel—six months after the last living person was around to maintain it, the plumbing in the Virgin megastore was functioning perfectly.

  Impressed and relieved I went back out onto the floor and wondered if there was any food left in the café’s pantry. I kind of doubted it but I was hungry enough to make a cursory search, at least. Halfway there I heard the noise again, the movement I’d heard immediately after waking. This time I was certain that it was inside the store.

  Fear, of course, clears the mind. Adrenaline pumped out from my kidneys and spread through my body in a rush. My back prickled and the skin beneath my earlobes started to sweat. It could have been a rat, or one of the girls stirring in her sleep. It could have been an animated corpse that had somehow found its way into the building at a time when we couldn’t see to defend ourselves.

  I took my flashlight out of my pocket and clicked it on.

  “Dekalb.” It was Gary, the world’s smartest dead man. I began to turn and point my light in his direction but he said, “no, please, don’t look yet.” I stopped and switched my light off.

  I heard him come closer. Maybe he could see in the dark—he wasn’t stumbling around like me. “Dekalb,” he said, “I need your help. I need you to explain to them. They have to understand.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “I can be a great asset to you,” he said. His voice was soothing, almost
hypnotic in the darkness. “You need to find those AIDS drugs before you can leave, right? I can walk anywhere in the city and be safe. I can get the drugs you need and bring them to your boat. You can sit on the boat and be safe and just wait for me to come to you.”

  “Gary,” I tried, “did you do something—”

  “Let’s not go there yet. I have something else—an idea about how you can get out of here in one piece. Right now you’re screwed, right? You can’t walk out that door without getting pulled to pieces. You have no food, no radio. There’s nobody coming to save you. You need this. You need this solution I’ve come up with.”

  He was right about that. “Tell me,” I said.

  “Not until you speak to the girls for me, okay? You have to keep them away from me, Dekalb. That’s what you do, right? You used to work for the UN. You, you mediate disputes. You have to mediate for me, you have to help me, come on. Just say you will.”

  I might as well have just eaten twenty snow cones. My belly was full of ice. “I’m going to turn my light on, Gary,” I started.

  He moved so quickly he could have snapped my neck if he wanted to. Instead he merely grabbed my hand and forced me to drop my flashlight. I could feel his body very close to mine, smell the decay of his flesh—and something else, something fresher but no less gruesome. “You help me, Dekalb. Damn you, you’re going to help me,” he whispered in my face and I smelled salami. “She was going to die.”

  CLISH-CLACK! The sound of the selector lever on an AK-47 being switched from SAFE to SINGLE FIRE (I couldn’t see it happen, it could have been FULL AUTO but it was Ayaan and she never wasted bullets). “Dekalb, what is this? Why are you making so much noise?” Her light speared through the darkness and showed me Gary’s face. There was blood on his chin, red, wet blood.

  Unh-uh. No, I thought, that wasn’t in the plan, no, I didn’t plan for this.