by D. J. Molles
Almost the same distance behind them as the man was in front of them, there stood a large white building. Its severe roofline and tall steeples gave no doubt to what it held. And that was their home now. Their reason for being there, for guarding the road. To make sure that no sick people made it past their checkpoint. Make sure nobody with bad intentions found their home.
The man who walked down the road drew closer, and now they could see him clearly with their naked eyes. He was a slight man, tattered and worn. His hair hung in bloody clumps down the sides of his face, and he wore glasses that were filthy and askew on his nose. His mouth hung open, his tongue halfway out. His clothes were rent and dirty and covered in gore. Actually, his entire person seemed to be covered in it. His legs, his arms, his torso, his neck, and up to his face. Like he had bathed in it and now it had crusted over and scabbed and dried to that unmistakable black-brown color.
Perhaps they would have shot him right there, because he looked like another man succumbed to the plague. But they could see that he held something in his arms, something small and dark red, like the rest of him.
As he came within twenty feet of their truck, they stepped out from behind it, brandishing their rifles, and they shouted and yelled at him, ordering him to kneel down. He stopped there in the road, right there on the double yellow line, and he looked at them with nothing on his face. And then he knelt, still holding the thing in his arms.
The older man stood back, aiming for his chest, while the younger one moved cautiously forward. The younger man craned his neck to see what it was in the man’s arms, and when he saw, he recoiled and looked back at his older partner. “Oh my God!”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” the older man said sternly.
The younger man’s face had blanched, and he trembled. “It’s a baby.”
The man kneeling before them shifted just slightly, hugged the form against his chest just a little tighter, as though he thought they would try to take it from him. He looked from the younger man to the older, searching their faces, trying to determine their intent. It was the first time that he showed any thought at all.
The older man took a step forward. “What happened, son?”
“I need…” The man’s voice was kiln-dried and splintered. “I need water for my baby girl. She’s not…She’s not…” He looked down at the form in his arms, but didn’t actually see it. It was the look of a man who saw only what he wanted and refused to see what was real. “She’s not doing so well. She needs food and water. Do you have any formula? I’ve checked…so many places. But I can’t find any. Do you have any formula? Or a nursing mother? Please.”
The older man lowered his rifle, but only an inch or two. He stepped forward, looked down into the kneeling man’s arms to confirm what he already knew. It was a tiny thing. Just barely fully formed, but not yet grown to any normal birthing weight. “Son,” he stated, his voice level and honest. “That baby there’s been dead for days.”
“No.” The man shook his head. “She just needs water. Please. She hasn’t had any food since…since…”
The older and the younger exchanged glances, and in them were hidden disgust and pity.
“What’s your name, son?”
The kneeling man tore his eyes away from the dead thing in his arms and he looked up at the older man, as though he were confused, as though he had to think to recall his name. “Uh…Clyde.”
The older man nodded. “Drake Chalmers.” He pointed back behind them. “I’m a deacon at that church right there. Got a lot of good people in there. And I think we do have a nursing mother. Would you be willing to give your baby to her?”
“Is she gonna help my baby girl?”
Chalmers smiled. “Of course.”
* * *
There was a woman in the church, just like Chalmers had said.
They had led him into the vestibule, and there Chalmers left him with the younger man, disappearing through the heavy oak doors of the sanctuary, where just beyond there was the murmur of conversations and many curious eyes looking in at them.
None of that registered with Clyde. He stood swaying on his feet, eyes opening and closing slowly as though he were fighting to keep from passing out. His mouth still hung open, white crust formed on the corners of his lips. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, his looked in on a vacant house.
Chalmers returned a moment later with the woman. She looked confused and a little frightened, and when she saw Clyde and the thing in his arms, she stopped dead in her tracks. Chalmers held her by the upper arm and kept her from retreating. Behind her, the doors to the sanctuary closed, and the faceless people inside were silent.
Clyde looked at her but still gave no expression. “Can you feed her?” He extended the form in his arms, the flesh limp with the beginnings of decay. All of it darkly rusted.
The woman squeezed her eyes shut. Tears came out.
Chalmers’s grip on her forearm tightened just a bit, and he pulled her forward. “Sarah,” he said calmly. “Can you help this man’s child?”
She forced her eyes open. She and Chalmers, and the other, younger man, they all stared at Clyde as though gauging or waiting for his reaction, but still none came. He seemed robotic. Devoid of his humanity. Like something had disconnected inside of him.
The woman, Sarah, reached out with shaking hands and took the child. Her face tightened with revulsion and horror as she touched it, but she did not pull away, and she took the child as any careful nurse would—cradling the head, supporting the back.
Her voice cracked and trembled. “I’ll take care of her.”
Chalmers gave her a fractional nod, and she left them. She went through the doors to the sanctuary, and all the eyes of those inside tracked her. And it was not until the doors clunked closed behind her that she let out a single, thin sound of misery and grief that never made it through the thick oak to Clyde’s ears.
* * *
He slept for a long time. He was not sure how long. They brought him water and small amounts of food. He drank and ate and fell back asleep, in a small side room where children’s paintings and pictures in crayon were hung on the walls. Once, he awoke to gunfire, but no one came for him, so he closed his eyes again. He did not speak, and he moved very little. A creature in chrysalis.
When finally he did awaken, it was bright sunshine outside. It lit up the windows of the small room he was in, and it was harshly white, so that he knew it was the heat of the day, when all the soft golden light had already been burned up. The interior of the room was stifling, and his shirt was moist with his own sweat. Clyde tried to remember if there had been air conditioning in the room before, but he couldn’t say for sure.
He sat up and stared down at the carpet. He knew where he was, like one might know something from reading it and not from firsthand experience. The world felt real enough to him now, but everything that had happened before, his entire life preceding, seemed a displaced montage of snapshots. Just a collection of dreams and imaginings.
He stood up slowly, felt his feet solid underneath him. His hands had been cleaned, but the blood on his arms and clothing remained, so it seemed he wore red sleeves. He did not react when he saw this. The pain he felt when he saw it was muted and faraway. Like an echo of himself bouncing back from the bottom of a deep cave.
He went to the door of the room and opened it. Fresh air flowed past his face, and only then did he detect the foul odor of himself. The air was still warm and humid, but it dried the layer of greasy sweat that already sat on his skin, giving him the impression of being cool.
Clyde looked both ways out of the door. He was in a long hallway. There were doors to either side. To his right, the hallway ended in a door that Clyde believed led outside. To his left, he could hear the sounds of people singing, very quietly. The words came softly as they sang in unison, and Clyde could not determine what they said, only that it was a hymn.
He stepped out of the room and began walking towa
rd the sounds of the singing. At the end of the hall was another door, and this appeared to lead into the sanctuary. There was a narrow glass window through which he could see a congregation gathered at the front pews. They were knelt, hands clasped in front of them, singing softly as though they did not want to be heard.
Clyde pushed the door open slowly and as quietly as he could. He stepped through and stood in the sanctuary, alone at the back. No one turned or gave notice of him. The sanctuary was a bright thing, painted white, and hot with the sun. There were large windows that stretched floor-to-vaulted-ceiling, but they were only frosted glass. For some reason Clyde had expected stained glass. The lack of them gave the place an institutional feel.
He stood there for a time as the voices rose and fell. He felt his sweat gather at his hairline and meander over the grooves and furrows of his forehead, and they traced an unfamiliar path, as though he did not know his own face. He breathed deeply of the stifling air and his lungs stretched in a strange way, like they had never been used before.
The air tasted different to him.
A hand touched his shoulder. He did not jump, because the touch did not threaten him. Instead he turned and found a man standing by his side. The man was not old, nor was he young. He was perhaps a bit more than middle-aged but had the form of someone who exercised frequently. His hair was graying from its original brown, and a prominent goatee stood out only slightly darker. His expression was slight—a calming one, something that spoke of kindness. But there was the glint of an edge to his eyes.
“You must be Clyde,” the man said. His voice had a tone, a bearing, something that enwrapped you. Made you subconsciously seek his approval and fear his rejection. One of those people who were to everyone a father, and took the role gracefully and effortlessly.
Still, Clyde had to think about it for a moment, though he finally nodded. “Yeah.”
The other man’s face became grave. He nodded, and a slight pressure from his hand convinced Clyde to move, to be guided toward the door he had just entered into the sanctuary from. Quietly, the man said, “Come with me, Clyde.”
And he went with him. Down the hall and past all the doors, including the one Clyde had come from. They went to the very end of the hall, where bright outside light made its way in. A sign above the door stood out—dark, but it still spelled clearly the word EXIT. They left through this door and were consumed by air that felt more like steam.
Still hotter than the inside of the stifling church.
“How long has the power been out?” Clyde asked.
“A day now,” the man said.
“And how long was I asleep?”
“About a day and a half.”
They continued walking. Around them was the sandy half turf of what passed for grass in the coastal region. Clyde glanced behind them as they walked and saw the bulk of the church. A simple cinderblock construction, painted beige. The roof a dark red, almost brown. Like dried blood, he thought. There were two steeples rising out of it, one in the front and one in the back. The front steeple was crested with a cross.
Clyde turned back around and saw their destination ahead of them. Near the woods that ensconced the church, there was a small plot where the dirt was upturned. A pale, sandy loam that looked clumped and cracked on the top where they had recently dug and replaced the dirt. There were three mounds, each with a white cross at the head.
Clyde swallowed thickly as they stopped before the small plot. From the corner of his eye, he could see that the man standing next to him was eyeing him, assessing him. Clyde did not make eye contact with the man, but instead scanned the mounds of dirt, and his eyes fell to the one that was very small, the dirt very fresh.
The man next to him spoke slowly, evenly. “You know that she was dead, right?”
Clyde was silent as he considered the words.
His neck tingled with the heat of the sunshine. The call of cicadas surrounded them, loud and insistent as it rose and fell. Clyde could feel the truth down deep in him, like the hard-baked residue of a nightmare. And he scrubbed it down into the dark cellars of his mind and he boarded up any place it might get free. This was not denial. He knew the truth. He just refused to face it. He avoided it like a hand avoids a red-hot piece of metal.
He nodded once, because to speak in that moment would be to break himself open.
“We didn’t have a name for the cross,” the man said. “If you wanted to put one on there…”
Clyde shook his head.
He had no name for the girl he’d carried in his arms. He had no name for the child he had made with his dead wife. Nothing to call the stillborn thing he’d ripped from her womb, birthed dead in a dead world, swimming in blood. A name would only make it real. A name would bring that nightmare out of the shadows he had pushed it into.
They were quiet for a time.
The man spoke, his words cautious but forthright. “In the Book of Job, the Lord tested a man. He let the Devil strike the man’s wife and children with sickness and disease until they died. He let the Devil bring pests on the man’s crops and kill his cattle. He let the Devil take everything from this man until he was just an empty soul. Kind of like you. Like all of us, really.”
The man looked out, squinting against the sun. “We’ve all lost something precious. Most of us have lost everything. These are times of tribulation.” He shook his head slowly. “This country is reaping what it has sown for generations. And now the Lord is calling on us to remain faithful, even in these trying days. Because all this hurt, all this loss”—here he looked at Clyde again—“all the things that we are forced to do that we don’t want to do…this is what the Lord intended for us. That we prove ourselves faithful to him. And then, just like in the end of the Book of Job, we will reap the blessings of his reward.”
The man faced away from the graves and back toward the church. Clyde turned with him, a question on his lips, but then he stopped, because the man named Chalmers was standing there. He had a rifle slung on his back, and he held another in his hands. And Clyde forgot what he was going to ask.
“Pastor Wiscoe,” Chalmers said, holding up the rifle.
The man that Chalmers had called Pastor Wiscoe looked at Clyde, and in his eyes was pity, but also a depth of understanding. Pastor Wiscoe knew what was inside of Clyde, and he did not recoil from what he saw.
He took Clyde by the shoulders and stared at him straight on. And his words went into Clyde and dove down deep. “I know that you think you have failed, Clyde. I know that you think you let your family down, that you weren’t strong enough, you weren’t brave enough or tough enough. But what happened was according to God’s design. He took everything from you in order to lead you here, to this point. Because He needs people with nothing to run to, nothing to fall back on.”
Wiscoe smiled. It was a smile that imparted forgiveness. “It wasn’t your fault that any of this happened. And none of the things that you did were your fault. Because you were preordained, my friend. You were preordained to be one of the faithful. And the only way you can ever truly fail is by giving up now, when your name has been called and you are most needed.”
Clyde felt tears in his eyes, watched them blur his vision. He looked upward into a bright, cloudless sky that seemed different to him than any other sky he had ever seen. Here he was not the man that he was. He was not the coward. He was not inadequate.
Here, he could be whatever he wanted to be.
He could be whomever he needed to be.
Clyde felt simultaneously dead and reborn.
He closed his eyes against the brightness of the sky and felt the tears squeeze out of him, the last tears he would ever cry, he knew. And when they had dried on his face, he spoke in a voice that he did not recognize as his own. “What do I have to do?”
Wiscoe took the rifle from Chalmers’s hands and turned to Clyde, the weapon extended toward him. “You must do the Lord’s work, Clyde.”
Meet the Author
D.J
. Molles is the best-selling author of The Remaining series. He published his first short story, Darkness, while still in high school. Soon after, he won a prize for his short story Survive. The Remaining was originally self-published in 2012 and quickly became an Internet best seller. He lives in the southeast with his wife and children.
Photo by Tara Molles
Also by D.J. Molles
THE REMAINING
The Remaining
The Remaining: Aftermath
The Remaining: Refugees
The Remaining: Fractured
The Remaining: Book 5 — Coming Spring 2015
THE REMAINING SHORT FICTION
“The Remaining: Trust”
“The Remaining: Faith”
If you enjoyed
THE REMAINING: FAITH,
look out for
THE REMAINING
by D.J. Molles
In a steel-and-lead-encased bunker twenty feet below the basement level of his house, a soldier waits for his final orders. On the surface, a plague ravages the planet, infecting more than 90 percent of the populace. The bacterium burrows through the brain, destroying all signs of humanity and leaving behind little more than base, prehistoric instincts. The infected turn into hyperaggressive predators with an insatiable desire to kill and feed. Soon the soldier will have to open the hatch to his bunker and step out into this new wasteland to complete his mission: SUBVENIRE REFECTUS.
TO RESCUE AND REBUILD.
CHAPTER 1
The Hole
Lee Harden stood in the center of a knockoff Persian rug. The soft polyester fibers felt like sandpaper on his bare feet. The seventy-two-degree temperature of the room felt hot one moment and too cold the next. His cotton T-shirt clung to his chest. The walls of the room were cloying and stale. Everything was frustrating. Monotonous. The sameness of his prison buzzed in his ears and drove him mad. His body begged him to break free.
