The Remaining: Faith

by D. J. Molles

  The stink of his vomit in the hot car began to waft up at them, seeming to side with the man who’d expelled it: They could not stay there. The heat would cook every bit of hydration out of them. They needed to get away from this place. They needed to get someplace cool and quiet, where Clyde could assemble his frazzled thoughts and figure out what the hell they were going to do next.

  Maybe none of that made sense.

  But it seemed obvious to him at the time. And he needed to go. He needed to run. He needed to get his wife and his unborn child away from this place. Haley shouldn’t be in these circumstances when she was so late in the pregnancy. What would happen to the baby?

  What had already happened?

  He pulled the door handle and pushed it open.

  Fresh air blasted in. The humid, ninety-five-degree air outside the car felt cool and refreshing compared to the two-hundred-degree hotbox they’d been in.

  Clyde nudged Haley. “Go!”

  They tumbled out of the car, trying to be quiet, but Clyde felt clumsy and obvious. He came out hands first, walking his palms forward until he could get his feet under him. The hot blacktop burned his hands and speckled them with gravel. They stayed low as they darted among the cars, shuffling along and looking this way and that.

  Haley moved ahead of him, and he kept his hand on her lower back, hot to the touch and soaked. He realized he still had not taken off his backpack, and his back and his abdominals ached and cramped from holding himself in that half-crouched position. Still he would not take it off.

  They reached the end of the cars, perhaps fifty yards away from the woods. There were a few industrial-type steel buildings that sat on road frontage, and a single brick house behind them, seeming out of place. And then there was the woods. Overgrown, and green and solid. Like a force field behind which they could shelter. Inside that thick growth, he was certain they would not be found.

  Neither of them spoke as they ran. Haley slowed, breathing harshly and holding her stomach, her face showing some pain. Clyde didn’t feel much better himself. He looked around again. There was nothing to see but cars parked in haphazard fashion, people’s belongings scattered on the road, and the conspicuous absence of their owners. But he could still hear it, farther away now, so that it echoed off the adjacent buildings at him—screams and screeches.

  A single, impotent gunshot.

  He took Haley by the hand. “Come on, baby. We’re almost there.”

  They reached the woods and disappeared into it, shrouded by greenery. On the inside it was dark with shade, but the humidity was worse and the breeze could not reach them, so it felt stifling and they could not catch their breaths. The mosquitos were thick in the woods and they swarmed them whenever they sat still.

  Haley gulped air and looked down at her jeans. They were dark in the crotch.

  “Oh my God.” Clyde put a hand to his head. “Did your water break?”

  Haley shook her head tightly and tried to wipe at the darkness. “I think I peed myself.”

  In the distance came a howl. Inhuman. Enraged. Clyde looked off in the direction that he had heard it coming from, but there was only a shroud of trees to meet him. When he turned back around, Haley was staring at him, eyes puffy red slits. Her mouth was seized down into a thin line. He knew the look very well.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, as though he didn’t already know.

  “What do you have in your backpack?”

  He glanced behind him. Shifted uncomfortably under the burden of it. “I don’t know. Some of our stuff.”

  “Some of our stuff,” she said heatedly, shaking her head.

  “Haley…I don’t know what you want.”

  She stepped toward him, hitting him in the shoulder with the heel of her palm. “You don’t know what I want?” she hissed. “You don’t fucking know? How about not to be in this fucking situation? How about a clean pair of fucking pants?”

  “Haley…”

  “We should have been on that bus!” she shouted suddenly. “Do you think I give a shit about all of this stuff? About the suitcase? About all the paperwork? It’s not important, Clyde! You’re important! This baby is important. All that other stuff is just stuff. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You can’t blame me for this,” he said lamely.

  “You sat there and argued with the guy about the fucking suitcase! While other people took our spots in line! I tried to get you to leave it behind!” She kicked leaves at him. “You’re so goddamned stubborn!”

  “Alright!” he suddenly shouted. “I’m sorry!”

  Haley rubbed her belly nervously, nostrils flaring.

  Clyde ripped off his backpack and tried to throw it, but it was too heavy and it landed with a dull thud just a foot or so from his feet. “Is that what you want, Haley? You want me to just throw everything away? Fine! Done! There! I threw it away!” He raked his fingers through his hair, feeling bits and pieces of leaves and sticks come out as he did. “Pardon the fuck outta me for not knowing that this was gonna happen!”

  Haley just looked away from him.

  “I know we should have been on that bus,” he growled. “But there’s not a whole lot I can do about it right now. I mean…” He clenched his teeth. “What do you want me to do? Just tell me. What should I have done, and what the hell do you want me to do now?”

  She turned back around toward him, enunciated her words with sharp motions of her hands. “I need you to think, Clyde. Please. I need you to help me think. I need you to get us out of this.”

  “Get us…?” Clyde stared at her for a long moment, felt the desperation in her eyes bleeding the anger out of him. What was left was just nausea. The gumminess of his dry mouth. The tang of his own vomit still lingering on the back of his tongue. He sank down, sat himself in the leaves. “Okay…okay…”

  Haley took long breaths and blew them out through pursed lips. Her eyes stayed on her husband for a time, the expression she wore not giving much away except for sadness, though he could not tell whether she was sad at him, or sad at the world, or just sad in general.

  He motioned to her. “C’mere. Sit down.”

  She sat down next to him, holding her back and wincing. Clyde’s neck stretched and he looked around, surveilling everything, trying to see what was beyond the tree line. As he looked, he spoke, his voice more controlled than it had been before. “We need a gun.”

  “My dad taught you how to shoot, right?”

  Clyde’s jaw clenched. “Yeah, he took me shooting.”

  A random scream drew their attention, but they couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

  Someplace far away. And it didn’t come again.

  Clyde continued, quieter this time. “We’ll sneak up to the school. And…and I’m pretty sure some of the soldiers, they, uh…”

  “Some of them got killed,” Haley finished for him. “We could take their guns.”

  “Yes. And there might be food and water.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “Clyde.”

  “What?”

  She touched his arm lightly. “Where are we going after that?”

  “We’re gonna go to the FEMA camp we were supposed to be at today.”

  She made an uncertain noise. “That’s, like, I don’t know how many miles—”

  “I’m gonna get you there,” Clyde interrupted, his voice strong, even if the rest of him wasn’t. He had conviction, he thought, and maybe Haley believed it and maybe she didn’t, but she sat back and seemed to concede. “I’m gonna get you there,” he repeated.

  “Well, let’s go.” She started to rise.

  He took her arm and pulled her back down. “No. We’re gonna stay down. We’re gonna stay right here. Until it’s dark. It’ll be safer to move at night. Right? Yes. It’s gonna be safer at night. We’ll wait till then.”

  THREE

  They waited while the day trickled by.

  Like waiting for a dripping tap to fill a barr
el.

  Some time before the sun went down, something crashed through the woods, out of sight of them. By then his heart had slowed to a normal pace, but the sound sent it rocketing again and Clyde and Haley both clung to each other’s sweaty forms and burrowed into the leaves to hide. The crashing stopped for a brief moment, followed by the sound of some strange, gargling noise. And then whatever it was ran back off into the woods, away from them.

  They did not move, even when the noise was gone. They lay on their backs, the mosquitos hovering around their faces and circling their ears. Their skin and clothes dampened as the sun lowered toward the horizon. Things crawled over their skin as they lay in the leaves. They watched a bit of dappled sunlight that had pierced the forest canopy. It crawled so slowly toward them, like a dying thing seeking help, and then it disappeared just before reaching them.

  Birds raced noisily through the woods, busy about their daily business of surviving. The presence of the two humans on the ground mostly went unnoticed. Squirrels shimmied from tree to tree, freezing when Clyde or Haley stirred to swat a mosquito. They would stare and wait for stillness before continuing on. Oblivious.

  No matter what happened outside of those woods, they would continue to do what they had done their entire short lives. They would harvest their food, and they would hibernate, and they would procreate, and they would die, and the disaster of humanity would have little effect on them, if any at all. Their instinct would drive them, and they would continue to perform their tasks, and the forest would continue on regardless of anything that happened to Clyde or Haley or their unborn baby or anyone else in the world. Those animals were just a bunch of biological cogs in some giant, organic machine whose purpose Clyde could not fathom. He only knew he was jealous of their single-mindedness. Envious that they could just flippantly go about their days without any care as to what was occurring beyond them.

  Just after dusk, when the light was still blue across the sky, Clyde heard an engine.

  He turned his head, facing through the edge of the forest and toward the school. He saw headlights flash and glimmer and then lay still, illuminating a row of cars. Though he could not see the vehicle that produced the headlights, he could hear the engine idling. Like the occupants were waiting for something. No sound of opening and closing doors. Just a throaty grumble. A truck, Clyde thought.

  Almost immediately he was on his feet, pulling Haley up after him. “C’mon!” he said loudly. “Let’s get them before they leave!”

  Haley’s voice wavered as he dragged her through the woods toward the school. “Clyde! We don’t even know who they are!”

  “They could be more troops, or cops, or firefighters,” he said breathlessly. “Or maybe we can just catch a ride with them. Maybe they’re trying to make it to the FEMA camp. Come on!”

  If Haley said anything else, he didn’t hear it over the sound of his own yelling: “Hey! Wait up! We’re friendly!”

  They staggered through green grass turned blue in the twilight, then hit the pavement of the road, and over it to the school grounds on the other side. The whole way, Clyde screamed at the top of his lungs, trying to get their attention, while he pulled Haley along behind him, getting the sense that she was resisting just slightly. But he was so focused on the concept that someone might be there who could help him that he barely noticed. He just stared at the glow of those headlights and hoped and prayed to God that they would not drive away before he could reach them.

  With no wind left in his lungs, he reached the corner of the school building and saw the headlights. They belonged to an SUV, something like a Suburban, but lifted a few inches and with oversize tires. He also saw dark shapes standing there, and he squinted into the glaring headlights until his eyes could focus on their faces.

  “Don’t fucking move!” a man’s voice yelled.

  Clyde stuttered to a halt, Haley stumbling into his back, both of them breathing heavily.

  “It’s okay,” Clyde said between gulps of air. “We’re friendly.”

  “Lemme see your hands!” the voice commanded.

  Clyde squinted against the headlights and his eyes adjusted to give him the full picture. There were three people standing before him. A woman and a child, hovering close to the SUV. The woman held a shotgun, and it was pointed at Clyde. The child was a boy of perhaps five. The third person was a man, standing a little farther from the woman and child. He was larger, and it was obvious he was well built, as he was wearing a tank top that showed his arms. Not “bodybuilder” big, as Clyde would have called it. But a lean, corded look. Someone who did a lot of physical labor. He wore a tan ball cap with no logo on it and had a goatee, thick and blond. He held a rifle of some make that Clyde was not familiar with, and like the woman and her shotgun, it was pointed at Clyde.

  “Whoa, whoa.” Clyde raised his hands.

  The man took a half step forward. “Shut up,” he ordered. “Do not move or I will shoot you dead, you understand me?”

  “Yes. Yes.” Clyde fumbled for words. “Look, we’re not trying—”

  “I said to shut up.” The man’s voice was still sharp, but it was not raised anymore. He had mechanical eyes that didn’t show much of the thoughts behind them, and they seemed to scan Clyde and Haley up and down for a moment. Assessing them. Determining whether they were a threat or not. Finally, he turned his head just slightly, while keeping his eyes locked on Clyde, and spoke to the woman and the child. “Honey, just stick close to the truck.”

  The woman nodded coolly. “Okay.”

  A moment passed with the man still eyeing them and Clyde not quite sure what to do. For Haley’s sake, he wanted to do something, to reason with the man, to accomplish something, to show that he was just as capable of fending for his family as this man was. But he could see, even in the dark, how straight the aim of that rifle barrel was—how that little black hole was staring straight at his face.

  “I don’t know you,” the man said finally, as though deciding something. “I think it’d be best if you two just turned around and got lost. Leave us be. And don’t show your faces again, or I will kill both of you. Don’t doubt me on that.”

  “What?” Clyde blurted, shocked. “What do you mean you’re gonna kill us?”

  The man just stared. “You heard me.”

  Clyde shook his head slowly. “Listen, we’re not here to hurt you or bother you.” He gestured to Haley. “My wife is pregnant. We need to get to the FEMA camp in New Bern. Are you folks driving out there? Or can you give us a ride to somewhere nearby…?”

  “Not givin’ you a ride anywhere,” the man said. “I don’t know you. And I don’t trust you.”

  Clyde could feel frustration boiling up inside of him. “I need help!” he said with sudden desperation. “I need some fucking help! Can’t we work together on this? I mean, if you’re going to the camp, then we can just sit in the back. We won’t get in the way.”

  “We’re not going to the FEMA camp,” the man said.

  Clyde looked confused. “But there was a mandatory evacuation.”

  “Yeah, there was a mandatory evacuation in Jacksonville, too. And Atlanta. And that didn’t work out too well for them, did it?” The man shook his head, seemed bitter for a moment. “Jamming everyone into one spot like that…just making a bigger target.”

  “Okay.” Clyde’s shoulders began to ache a bit from holding up his hands. “Look. Just let us grab a few things. We’re hungry and thirsty. And we need a gun. Just one.”

  The man was shaking his head before Clyde even finished.

  Clyde looked at him questioningly. “Why are you shaking your head?”

  “You’re not taking any of this stuff.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because I’m taking it.”

  Clyde’s eyes were wide. “Are you fucking kidding me? There’s plenty of shit lying around here! You can’t possibly use it all. You won’t even be able to fit it all in your truck!”

  “Then we’ll make two trip
s.” The man’s voice was starting to sound heated.

  Clyde could feel himself losing his temper, like he had with the soldier in line. But the muzzle of the rifle was still pointed at him, and Haley was squeezing his arm. And in a certain aspect, it angered him. Like she didn’t think Clyde could handle this man without getting them both shot.

  Clyde swallowed, forced himself to be calm. “Look. Just some food and water. And one gun; that’s all we’re asking. You won’t miss it. And we’ll be gone. You’ll never see us again.”

  “And what if I need it?” the man said. “What if that bit of food and water I let you take could possibly save my wife and kid? What if a couple weeks from now, that little bit of food and water keeps them alive long enough for me to find some more supplies?” The man did not say it with venom or spite. He said it with sincerity and conviction. “Do you think that if my family dies of starvation or dehydration, that I’ll be okay with the fact that I gave away some of our food and water to strangers? Do you think that I value your family more than my own?”

  “No.” Clyde shook his head.

  “No,” the man confirmed. “My family is my responsibility. And your family is yours.”

  “This isn’t gonna last forever,” Clyde said quietly.

  The man’s eyebrows went up. “How long do you think it takes to die during a disaster like this?” He seemed to make the final decision that he would not converse with them anymore. His face fell flat and emotionless, and he motioned away with his rifle out into the darkness. “Now get lost. Both of you. Find food and water somewhere else.”

  Clyde and Haley backed away, as though they feared he might shoot them in the back if they turned. Eventually they did turn, and they went out into the darkness that had grown deeper in the small minutes that had passed. The light of the SUV showed them their path, and they took it hurriedly through the parking lot toward the street.

  As they hit the street and made their way through the cars, they passed out of the light of the headlamps. Now the sky was nearly black in the east and a cloudless, deep blue in the west. In the half light, each to the other seemed like a faceless smudge, glossy with sweat, but the features melted away. As they moved through the cars that were parked along the highway, they tried to ignore the carnage around them.