Soma (The Fearlanders)

by Joseph Duncan

  14

  Night fell.

  They sat on the back porch like an old married couple, watching the sun retreat from the bloody arena of the sky, the battle lost. Soma reclined in a white rattan chair, Perry in a rocker—his grandmother’s, he had said. Frogs were croaking in the woods beyond the fence. Fireflies strobed over the high grass in the back yard, advertising for mates in lambent Morse code. Soma listened to the frogs croaking and the crickets chirruping and tried very hard not to wish Perry away. The buzzing and croaking and whirring reminded her of her father’s farm by Brookville Lake, of the lovely weekends she and Nandi had spent there, back before the Phage, when they were still newlyweds and their biggest worry was the utility bill. How many times had they made love in her parents’ spare bedroom, the window open and letting in the symphony of the woodland’s nocturnal denizens, Nandi thrusting gently atop her as a cool breeze ballooned the curtains in and out, in and out? She was quite certain Aishani had been conceived in that bed, a squeaky old brass bed, and it was very possible that she had been conceived in that bed as well. Sweet as Perry was, as much as he had helped her, she would kick him down a mineshaft to have her husband and daughter with her right then. It was awful but it was the truth. At least she had the decency to feel ashamed of herself.

  “I thought about killing myself when I came back,” Perry said. He took a drag on his cigarette and blew out a pensive cloud of smoke.

  He had asked her if she minded him smoking, even though it was his house. She had answered no, she didn’t mind at all. Her father was a smoker and she enjoyed the smell of it. He never smoked inside the house, Perry had assured her. Just out on the porch, when the day’s work was done. “It’s not like it can kill you now,” she had replied with a laugh, and he had fetched a pack of Marlboros from the kitchen, looking ashamed, like a teenager smoking in front of his parents for the first time. “Surgeon General be damned,” he said.

  He didn’t say anything else, just rocked. Finally, curious, Soma asked, “What stopped you?” She had also contemplated suicide. The only thing that stopped her was her desire to find her family. She wondered what had stayed his hand.

  He thought about it a moment, then said, “This. Nights like this. It’s so beautiful out here in the evening, like some classic painting. The Lady of Shalott, maybe. That’s a painting by an artist named Waterhouse. It’s one of my favorites.”

  “The Lady of Shalott?” Soma echoed. She didn’t know much about art.

  “It’s based on a poem by Lord Tennyson. It’s about unrequited love.” Then he surprised her by reciting a section of the poem:

  “And down the river's dim expanse

  Like some bold seer in a trance,

  Seeing all his own mischance

  With glassy countenance

  Did she look to Camelot.

  And at the closing of the day

  She loosed the chain, and down she lay;

  The broad stream bore her far away,

  The Lady of Shalott.”

  “Sounds sad,” Soma said.

  “It is,” Perry replied. “That’s what makes it so beautiful. The painting, too. It can break your heart. It’s why I couldn’t kill myself when I first came back. It would be like spitting in the face of the artist… the artist who made all this.” He gestured to the trees, the vermillion heavens, the blinking fireflies.

  “God, you mean.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. I’ve never really believed in God. Not like most folks do. I believe in… something. Something bigger than anything men could ever describe in a book or a song or a painting. But not the Biblical Christian God. He’s kind of an asshole.”

  He turned and looked at her.

  “You believe in God, Soma?”

  “No,” she said, and then she added, “But I don’t disbelieve in Him either.”

  “You reserve the right,” Perry said, grinning crookedly, and she nodded.

  “I reserve the right to change my mind at any time and without notice based upon current and future evidence,” she said.

  He laughed softly.

  “I gave up on the Bible God when my Grampa got cancer,” he said. “I prayed and prayed and prayed for him to get better, but it never happened. He died in horrible agony. Gramma said it was his punishment for smoking. She hated his smoking. Said it was a sin to pollute our bodies with cigarette smoke. God’s temple and all that. Well, he drank and he whored around and he cussed, too. But he was a genuinely good person. Never raised his voice in anger. Loved all of us unconditionally. Loved his wife, too, even though she was a mean old bat. He didn’t deserve to die like that. I decided then and there, at the ripe old age of ten years old, that the God of the Bible was a petty asshole and did not deserve my worship. What does it say about God when a ten-year-old boy is more forgiving than He is? Nope. God might have set the universe spinning, but He doesn’t give folks cancer for having a smoke. And He didn’t set the Phage on us either, like a lot of the holy rollers were saying there at the end. From what I’ve seen, He just is, and maybe it’s our job to find the good in all the bad. Or maybe He allows the bad so that we can recognize the good when we see it.”

  “Or maybe it’s all just random chance,” Soma said.

  Perry thought about that for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah… that seems the most unlikely theory of all.”

  They sat quietly for a few minutes. Perry mashed his cigarette in an ashtray, fished his smokes from his pocket and lit another cigarette.

  “How did you die, Perry?” Soma asked.

  He didn’t answer for a minute. His face looked drawn in the waning light, like an old hound dog. Finally, he said, “I just got sick. Me and my wife both. You didn’t have to get bit to catch the Phage. It wasn’t like in the zombie movies.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “I came down with it first,” Perry said. ‘We were hoping it was just the flu. We had made it through the worst of the pandemic, thought we were immune, but the fever just kept getting worse and worse. Finally, I was too weak to move. Just laid in bed, sweating and shivering and puking in a bowl. I tried to talk my wife into leaving. Told her to go to her mother’s house and leave me to die, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Last thing I remember is her scooting into the bed beside me. ‘Scootch over,’ she said, and I saw she was sweaty and flushed. ‘I got it, too,’ she told me. ‘Guess we’re gonna die together after all, minus the growing old part.’ I held her in my arms and that’s the last I remember. Guess I died right after that.”

  Soma frowned. He was leaving something out of the story. He claimed he had wandered around his bedroom until he awakened. That made sense because zombies don’t remember how things like doorknobs and stairs work. She remembered her wanderings, though the memories were dream-like and confused; he should remember his, too. “So what happened to your wife?” she asked.

  Perry stopped rocking. In the deepening dark, the tip of his cigarette flared. “I ate her,” he said. He spat the words out, his voice flattened by the weight of the emotions piled on it. “I guess I revived before she did and I ate her. When I came back from the dead zone, all that was left of her was bones. Just bones, scattered across the bed. The worst part is I can remember doing it. I remember eating her after the Phage brought me back. Every goddamn bite.”

  He rocked slowly, head down. The tip of his cigarette blinked like the fireflies in the yard.

  Soma got up and embraced him. “You couldn’t help it, Perry. You weren’t really you.”

  He put his hand on her back, acknowledging her sympathy without really accepting it. “I know. I tell myself that every day. I just wish zombies could cry. I don’t think it would haunt me as bad if I could cry.”

  15

  They retired shortly after that. Perry lit some candles in the living room and picked up the book he was reading, sitting in the easy chair beside the window. He told her to make herself at home. Soma had the feeling he wanted some time to himself, so she asked him where she shoul
d sleep.

  “Can we sleep?” she asked. “I haven’t slept since I came back.”

  “Sort of,” Perry answered. He put the book back down. “It won’t be like when you were alive. It’s more like daydreams. Really vivid daydreams. You just lie down and let your mind wander. After a while, you’ll start dreaming. But you’ll know you’re dreaming while you’re doing it. Sort of like a lucid dream, if you ever had one of those back when you were alive.”

  She had heard of lucid dreams but had never experienced one. Lucid dreamers became conscious while they were dreaming. They claimed to be able to control their dreams after waking inside of them. She’d worked with a guy who was really into stuff like that – lucid dreams, astral projection, healing crystals, psychic phenomena. He had taken drugs like galantamine and choline to induce the altered sleep states, said it was like having a little door in the back of his head, one that he could open and look inside at night.

  It sounded… trippy.

  “Do we have to sleep now, or can we just keep going?” she asked.

  “You’ll feel better if you rest,” Perry said. “I don’t think we have to sleep anymore, but your body will regenerate a little if you do. I stayed up for a week straight once, just to see how long I could push it, but the pain gets worse the longer you go without resting, and you start getting funny in the head. See things out of the corner of your eye. Hear voices. I don’t recommend it.”

  He showed her to a bedroom. It was a small room with a full size bed and a couple bookshelves. There were a number of cardboard boxes and plastic storage bins stacked against the walls. The bedroom, she could tell, was used more for storage than sleepovers.

  “We could lie down together if you want,” he said from the doorway, holding a candle in his hand. The flickering light made the shadows of his face twitch and jump.

  “I…”

  “You don’t have to worry about me getting frisky. Those parts don’t work anymore either,” he said. “Probably the worst thing about being a zombie. For a guy, anyway.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Perry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, crossing the room quickly and placing the candle on the bedside table. “Just thought I’d offer. My bedroom is right across the hallway if you need anything during the night. I usually stay up pretty late reading. There’s a rabbit in the fridge if you get hungry. Fridge doesn’t work without power, of course, but I got it sitting in a bowl of water. It’s good and fresh. Just help yourself.

  “Okay.”

  He headed toward the door. “If you get lonely, just knock. I like to talk, in case you couldn’t tell. Or we could play some cards.”

  “All right,” she said with a smile, turning back the covers of the bed.

  “You want me to shut the door?”

  “No, leave it open,” she said.

  He looked at her from the doorway a moment and then withdrew. “Good night, Soma. Make sure you blow out the candle before you doze. They’re precious.”

  “I will. Good night, Perry.”

  She listened to his cowboy boots clomp down the corridor, then sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off her shoes and socks. She wriggled her toes. She was a little disgusted by how wasted her feet looked -- like scaly chicken feet, only brown instead of yellow -- but enjoyed twiddling her toes. She slid them under the covers and lay back, pulling the covers up to her chin.

  Every cell in her body breathed a collective sigh of relief. The mattress was one of those memory foam mattresses that conformed to a person’s body. It was like lying on a giant marshmallow. She stared at the ceiling, watching the golden light jitter as her limbs tingled and her body slowly sank into the bed. There was pain. The pain was always there. But for a moment, it was overshadowed by the sheer pleasure of lying down, of relinquishing control of her body. Not once in the last five years had she laid down in an honest to goodness bed, and it was glorious. She would have wept if she could.

  The spare bedroom was close enough to the living room to listen to Perry’s movements. She heard the chair creak as he sat, the intermittent swish of pages being turned. He hummed quietly to himself as he read. He probably talked to himself when he was alone, too, she thought with a smile. It was nice. It was comforting. She felt safe for the first time since she had awakened.

  She rolled over and blew out the candle, then turned on her back and lay in the dark, wondering if Nandi was lying in his own bed somewhere, thinking about her. It had been five years since she died. For her, time had passed like a child waking from a dream, almost instantaneously. She had memories of her wanderings, but those memories were dreamlike and disjointed, with very little sense of time or place. For Nandi, if he still lived, it had been five years of real time. Five long years. Perhaps he had found someone else, a fellow survivor, to share his life. She hoped he had. She hoped he was happy, wherever he was, whether he was with someone new or alone. She just wanted to see him again, to see her daughter, who was now almost eleven years old, and her mother and father.

  Nandi had brought the girl into their bedroom as Soma lay dying. They could not kiss. She couldn’t even embrace her daughter for fear of infecting her with the Phage, but she had said good-bye, telling the little girl again and again just how much she loved her, how sorry she was she couldn’t be there for her. Even in extremis, that was what hurt Soma the most: that sense of failure, the feeling that she was abandoning her only child, whether it was against her will or not. It was a guilt only a dying parent could know.

  “I don’t want you to die, Mama!” her daughter had sobbed, trying to wriggle out of her father’s arms. “Please, Mama, don’t go!” She strained to reach her mother, and Nandi stepped away, moving her outside of arm’s length.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she had wheezed, face slick with sweat, every nerve ending in her body shrieking out in pain. “Mommy can’t help it. I’d stay if I could. I really, really wish I could.”

  Aishani was ten years old now, no longer a baby but not quite a teenager yet. Soma remembered what she had looked like herself at ten years old: all knees and elbows and big cow eyes. Would Aishani look like her, or would she take after her father? She had been a bit of a mix the last time Soma had seen her. Willowy like her father, but with her mother’s dark eyes and full lips.

  At some point, her ruminations deepened, and Soma imagined she was at her father’s house at Brookville Lake. She was in the garden on the south side of the property, where the ground sloped down to several acres of dense pines. She was helping her mother weed the green beans. The back door slammed shut and she looked toward the house, mopping the sweat from her brow. It was Aishani. The girl paused to pull on a pair of men’s work gloves. She was dressed in blue jeans and a halter-top, and one of her grandfather’s big straw hats. She smiled at Soma and started across the back porch.

  As Perry had said, Soma realized she was dreaming even as she took part in the dream. It was a strange sensation, her awareness like a double exposed photograph, and for a moment the world around her thinned. Objects in the dream world stuttered in and out of existence, subtly altered on their return: the shed, the pines, the plants growing in the garden. The color of the sky changed from blue to salmon pink and back to blue again. She held desperately onto the dream, trying to strengthen it with her will. She did not want it to end.

  Loping across the lawn, ten-year-old Aishani, gangly like her father, drawled, “Dad said to help you and Gramma in the garden!”

  She was all legs, like a newborn colt, but so very, very pretty, with big almond-shaped eyes and her mother’s thick hair. Soma melted at the sight of her. She wanted to embrace her but didn’t quite dare, afraid her hands would slide through the child like she was a ghost, or that the contact would shatter the illusory world.

  “Is that right?” she said. “Sounds to me like your dad just wants you out of his hair for a minute. What’s he doing inside?”

  “Cooking,” the girl said
, plopping an oversized glove on her hip. Her opinion on that was no great mystery. Nandi was a terrible cook.

  “Cooking?” Soma asked. “Cooking what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She could not tear her eyes from the child, even though she knew the dream-Aishani was not real. Maybe this is how she really looked, Soma thought, somewhere out there, not so very far away. Or a close approximation.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Aishani asked.

  “Like what?” Soma asked.

  “Like funny,” the girl said.

  “Oh, don’t mind me,” Soma said. “Come over here and help me and your granny pull weeds.”

  The girl started to kneel down and froze, her arms coming up from her sides. Her eyes swelled until they looked like they might pop from their sockets and go rolling in the dirt. Soma followed her gaze and saw that she was pulling weeds from around an up thrust human arm. The hand and forearm sprouted from the ground like some bizarre plant, stiff with rigor mortis. All the plants in the garden had transformed into stiff, partially decomposed human limbs.

  “Mommy, what are they? Make them go away!” Aishani cried, and Soma squeezed her eyes shut, tried to will the rotting arms and legs to change shape, to transform back into the green beans and corn and tomatoes they had been a moment before. But in forcing her will upon the dream, trying consciously to alter it, she wounded it in some way she did not understand, and it fell apart in her mind, fell away in glinting shards, like the slivers of a shattered mirror.

  No! she almost screamed, coming awake in the lightless bedroom.

  It was pitch dark. There was just one window and it was covered with a heavy blanket. Not so much as a single moonbeam pierced the opaque covering.

  Fumbling in the dark, Soma rose and made her way to the door. She couldn’t stay in bed. She would suffocate if she did.