The only thing I had in this new world that was familiar was her. I’d only been awake for almost two days and she was the thing that stood out most in my mind, so I figured that if I was to retain any bit of my sanity I would have to keep her close to me. She wrapped my freshly broken arm with great care, seizing her hands back at first glimpse of a grimace or a cringe. Her eyes, locked into mine to detect even the tiniest change in my comfort so it could be quickly set right. The bandage was wound not too tight but not too soft, it was Goldilocks. From my view, with the observation light behind her, she looked like angel; her blond hair perched daintily on her shoulders as a halo of light emerged from her scalp and surrounded the rest of her body. It was as if she had been pulled from the roof of the Sistine Chapel and given to me personally. After redressing my break she kissed my forearm. “What was that for?” I asked “Too make it better,” she said “my mom used to kiss my boo boos to make them better and now I’m doing it for you.” She kissed it again “See? It works doesn’t’ it?” I just smiled, I couldn’t believe that this type of kindness still existed in the world. “Thank you” I said “for everything.” “Everyone needs some help sometime,” she responded “I couldn’t sit idly by and watch you wither and die.” She lifted from my bedside and begun to walk out “Wait,” I said as she turned back to hear my inquiry “how can you be so nice to someone when you don’t even know their name?” “Oh, I know your name.” She said, I just looked at her dumbfounded “How?” she mouthed the word “chart” as she pointed to the clipboard that hung from the foot of my bed. “But I don’t know your name, so there isn’t an equal balance.” I said. She whispered “Hope” before exiting for the day. I sighed as I laid back to continue my staring contest with the ceiling, this was the worst part of my day, the longest possible time before I’d see her again, Hope.
I couldn’t sleep that night, too many nightmares. The average person has between six to eight cognitive dreams per night, all of mine were bad. Its funny what could be considered a nightmare, generally speaking dreaming about your daughter’s wedding or the birth of a grandchild would be enjoyed, except for when you know these things will never happen and you find yourself trapped in a self created fantasy without a chance for escape, in this circumstance these events could be considered torture. So I just laid in my dark room, staring at the dark ceiling, waiting for the dawn.
RE-EDUCATION
Over the past six weeks I had come to see the pattern that goes on in the mornings. Firstly Frank wakes up about seventeen minutes after dawn, he grumbles his way down the stairs and uses the bathroom for approximately twelve and a half minutes before he goes into the kitchen. He makes himself a pot of something that slightly resembles coffee and while that brews he gets dressed for work, taking him five minutes, then coffee in the cup and out the door. Total time per morning thirty four and one half minutes, when the future is limited, time is precious.
Hope’s mornings are a lot different than Frank’s, but I guess that’s because they have two differing schools of thought about the end of the world. Hope tends not to jump out of bed and get a move on like Frank does, she sort of meanders out of bed and floats through the rest of her morning. She comes inside for a glass of water before going back outside for an extra ten minutes of rest. After waking up again she comes inside the house and scavenges up some breakfast, usually something sweet to start off the day, she eats leisurely, making sure to savor every bite, to relish in every taste, all the while perusing through the same seven year old issue of People magazine. She puts her plate and fork in the sink to be gotten at a later time and then she comes in and checks on me and gives me my morning medicine. This is definitely the highlight of my day. We talk for a bit before she leaves to continue her routine. She goes out to her tent and makes her bed, then comes inside for a shower. She sings while she’s in the shower, the sound carries through the pipes running into the basement. Usually she sings oldies like Elvis or the Carpenters or the Mama’s and the Papa’s, except for Thursdays I’ve noticed, on Thursdays she sings The Beatles and nothing else.
She comes out of the shower in a burst of steam, no blow drying her hair or brushing her teeth, not a second for that steam to settle. She glides through the halls, lightly humming the tune that she previously was providing lyrics to, and makes her way back to her tent outside. At this point, all I can see is her feet through my dingy basement window. Now, I’m not a foot person, I don’t have a fetish or what have you, but these were dogs that would make Tarintino bark. Ankles so delicate that it seems as though they could barley support a toothpick, let alone a perfect woman. She drops her towel in a heap around her feet, naked as a hippie at Woodstock, but it only further proves the fact that she is carefree in the face of impending doom thereby making her the greatest thing in the world to me.
Usually after getting dressed she would lay in the grass and stare up at the sky, but today she deviated from her routine. She came back inside and into my room, her fresh scent overwhelms. She looks into my eyes and takes my hand, the warmth radiates from my palm into my arm and shoulder. “Your arm is nearly healed.” She said, “Do you want to go outside?” I tell her I do but before I can rise from my bed she stops me “Before we go, there are some things you need to know about what you’re going to see out there, okay?” “Hope,” I rebut “I was a wartime photographer during the Iranian civil wars, there isn’t a lot I can’t take.” “Just trust me on this, David, it’s different to see something happen over time, you kinda get used to it and you adapt, but to walk in to full blown…just go with me on this one.” She stops talking, her eyes glaze over with a far off look as she takes a couple of deep breaths. She looks down at her feet, as if written on them is the next thing she’s going to say. “It’s bad out there.”
After that we sit silently for a few moments, her alone with her thoughts of what is out there, me with mine of what I think is out there. “It’s just you’re all innocent, you know, you’ve been out for all this time, all these bad things that happened you weren’t around for, I think that what’s out there might spoil that if you aren’t prepared for it.” “I’m a big boy, Hope,” I said, lightly putting my hand on her arm “I can handle it.” “All right, the first thing you’re going to notice is the smell, whatever you think you can smell down here is nothing compared to how it’s going to be outside. Then you’re going to notice what’s causing it.” “And what’s that?” I queried. “Bodies, hundreds of them in every alley and on every rooftop, just piled on top of each other, some twenty feet high, some more. It’s easier not to think of them as people, or ex people, just think of it as garbage, piles and piles of it. Along with that you’re going to hear birds, millions of them feeding and squawking, the sound of flesh being ripped from bone echoes everywhere, there isn’t a place it doesn’t penetrate. The only place where the birds won’t follow you is in one of the cultists boroughs because of all the fires. You’ve got to watch out for the cults out there. After the impact date was announced all the religions went bat shit crazy and split into different offshoots of themselves. There’s only three strong ones present in New York anymore. There’s the ones with the shaved heads, they’re the Christ’s Collation, they believe that mass human sacrifice will save all of us from impact, but mostly they stay on Long Island because a lot of people volunteer to die and they don’t need to come to the rest of the city to find victims. The ones in all black are the suicide cultists, they call themselves Church of God’s Undying Grace, they really don’t bother anyone either but if you get in their territory they think that it’s their divine duty to set people free of their mortal shell and save them from their finite fate, or something like that. Then there’s the Satanic one, Demon’s Gate, those are the one’s you have to look out for, they’re under the belief that enough fire will propel the planet just enough off course to miss the asteroid. They’re usually pretty badly burned so they’re easy to spot and avoid.
There is a huge fence around their part of the city
to keep people from interfering with their agenda.
There’s rampant drug use and prostitution, you pretty much can’t walk more than ten feet without having to step over someone fucking or shooting up. It’s pretty much the only currency that has any real value anymore. They trade sex for drugs and drugs for sex. All the drugs and STDs can make people a little crazy though, so every once in a while It’ll feel like your stuck in some kind of old George Romero movie and you’ll have to find somewhere safe to hide until they forget about you. Also don’t carry any valuables on you, if anyone sees them you’re as good as dead. I once saw a guy bite off another guy’s finger to get his wedding ring. Otherwise just keep an eye out for thieves, miscreants, dealers, thugs, goons, and your usual criminals and you should be okay.”
I stared at her as though she had just told me that she had reattached my foot to my forehead. “It’s really like that out there?” “I wish I could say differently, but yeah. Now, I mean, I lived the last six years with this going on, but you, things were okay for most of your life, do you really think you can handle it?” “There’s only one way to find out Hope, help me up.” She grabbed my arm and helped me hobble over to my crutches. She slipped a pair of pants over my mildly useless legs and walked behind me as we ascended the basement stairs, her hand on the small of my back guiding me throughout my climb.
Crossing the threshold brought the odor into me, I could smell it in my pores and taste it in my mouth. It was like taking a dead rat, blending it up, swallowing it, vomiting it up, and then swallowing it a second time. I retched my way though half of the house before I realized that this is my first time actually in the meat of the house. Looking around I saw how meagerly Frank actually lived. Loosely stocked kitchen shelves sparsed with half eaten boxes of food, the mostly torn linoleum littered with small scraps of plastic and paper, a tiny seven inch black and white TV stood atop a decaying telephone book and judging by the carpet of dust over it had been declared useless long ago. I pressed forward, shadowed by the sound of scurrying rodents or insects or some other creature, towards my goal of the unknown that laid outside. I stopped mid movement as I reached for the door, not from questioning myself if I was really ready for what was in store for me but I was captivated by the gleam of the doorknob. In this decaying kitchen, covered in garbage, dust, and half finished vittles sat a shiny brass knob. It looked out of place and just where it should be simultaneously. There was something about it that just made me stop and appreciate it for a second, but that moment was fast fleeting.
REGENERATION
To say my eyes hurt would be an understatement, damn that shiny brass knob and the immediate pain it caused me. Imagine a thousand needles with salt tips being bored into your retinas and that would be a stubbed toe comparably. Natural light is a bitch, there used to be a rash of suicides and depression in London over the rainy months which was attributed to the lack of sunlight. People miss the sun when it’s not around, the sun doesn’t miss people, it exacts revenge on them. While I cradled my instantaneously sun burnt eyes, I began to wretch, the smell described by Hope went above and beyond the praise she gave it, the smell of decayed flesh replaced that neutral air smell we all once took for granted.
I fell to the ground, seeing spots and vomiting all over myself. Through my over exposed eyes I faintly made out the shadowy figure that once was Hope, dragging me back inside the house, keeping me safe. My vision slowly returned as did my control over my stomach expunging. “Hope,” I asked “is it like this everywhere?”. “No,” she replied as she sat down on the floor beside me “it’s actually worse everywhere else, New York is one of the two cities in the world where the economy isn’t completely in shambles, everywhere else is OTSS.” “OTSS?” “Yeah, OTSS, only the strong survive, Darwinism at it’s finest, most places you’ll only find one person, sometimes a whole family, running an entire ghost town, New York and New Delhi are the only places where people still co-exist with other people.” “That’s horrible.” I rebutted “Well,” she said “that’s life now, it is what it is, you know, you have to roll with the punches.” Flabbergasted, I just laid for a minute, trying to comprehend all the things currently going on around me, it was about then that it actually hit me. “It’s really all over, isn’t it?” I asked through a cracking voice that should belong to some hormone ridden teenager or Peter Brady. Hope put her hand on my forehead “We’ll try to go outside again tomorrow.” And with that she got up and walked towards that shiny brass knob. “Wait, you didn’t answer me.” “Hey, outta sight outta mind, know what I mean David?” and with that she was gone.
I pulled myself off the ground and steadied myself on the kitchen counter, which felt less like wood and more like a milk soaked brownie. I stood there, thinking over and over “This is it, the end of the world.” Visions of my Eve and Linda flew through my mind like comets in the cosmos, fleeting glimpses of a life that could never return, and for the first time since I was awakened, I cried. Most guys won’t talk about crying, it’s like girls and farting, we know they do it, they know they do it, but it is not to be talked about under any circumstances, I cried crocodile tears for what felt like days.
It’s amazing what a good cry can do for your psyche, it’s like all that bottled up sadness is somehow released in wet little doses. I saw a pair of sunglasses on a shelf, between some moldy waffles and a bottle of expired aspirin. Donning them along with the clear mind I now had made me feel as if I could withstand the horrors that waited outside. I felt like He-Man, scared and weak until raising the Sword of Power, these sunglasses were my sword of power. With my newfound bravery I walked outside to Hope’s tent/home, then came to a quandary. Her flap was shut, and you can’t really knock on a piece of fabric but shouting for her would just be rude, so I shuffled around a bit and waited to be noticed. The zipper came down cautiously, and I could see her eyes as she peered around. Her eyes were puffy and red, she must have cleared her mind of sorrow as well. Upon seeing me she flung open the flap as well as a flap could be flung, and shot out of her tent like a Roman candle. “Holy shit David, what are you doing out here, are you ok?!” “I’ve come to terms, Hope, I’d like to see the city.” “Understood,” She said “Let me just go inside and freshen up.”
Now I’d only been unconscious for six years but in my time freshen up meant to go inside and splash some water on your face, maybe put on some make-up. Imagine my surprise when Hope came bounding out of Frank’s house with two shotguns and a nickel plated nine millimeter. She must have known what I was thinking because her first words were “Go with me on this David, if you walk out there without one of these, you’re cannon fodder.” With that she tossed me the shotgun like she was Arnold fucking Schwarzenegger, I resisted the urge to cock it one handed and say “Lock and load”.
Managing a shotgun and crutches proved to be more difficult than I could have ever imagined. After watching (and chuckling at) me fumble them around for a few minutes Hope came to the rescue. Ever the MacGyver, Hope grabbed a couple lengths of cord and fastened the shotgun to my right crutch. “See, point and click.” She said, demonstrating her new handicapable weapon. I will admit that it was a marvel of innovation, it was at such a perfect height I could still grip the trigger with it attached to the crutch. Now, prepared as boy scouts, we set forth into the stomach of New York.
She wasn’t exaggerating about the bodies, we couldn’t take the first two alleys to Times Square because we were blocked by walls of death covered in a moving mass of crows and vultures. Women, children, men, blacks, whites, latinos, in death there was no discrimination. Hope didn’t even pay attention, but after years of seeing things like this I don’t blame her, it makes her good nature and kindness all the more astounding. There’s an empathy that all people have, most people will say sympathy but it’s more than that, it’s more subconscious, it’s not something in your brain, it’s in your heart. I could feel all the pain and misery that had swelled up over the years into this climax of death, all these people, all
these lives; I thanked the maker that I wasn’t a Jedi.
We continued on our destinationless trek, stepping over drugged out transients. I don’t know if it was the yellow, pollution laden sky or the years of uncaring disrepair or a combination of the both, but New York didn’t live up to the tales I’d heard of its former glory. It looked as if the entire city had been built long ago by a long extinct race but not in a Greco classic way, more like it was built, bombed, glued back together with grime, and left to bake in the sun. That’s the New York of today, a shadow of it’s former self.
The End Page 2
