Apocalypse- Year Zero

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  “I’m not. I’m a monster,” was all Rook could say.

  A sound from behind. Rook turned.

  Ingrid was standing in the hall doorway with her purse over her shoulder and Daryl’s Lion King backpack in her hand. Ingrid looked absurd that way. Frayed hair and child’s backpack. Rook realized how much Ingrid romanticized crisis. Comedic, almost. Ingrid had to make a show of packing her things and so she’d stuffed them into Daryl’s backpack.

  Ingrid’s eyes were wide. Blond hair askew. She took in Fleecey’s still-convulsing form atop the towel in the cardboard box, and then stretched her hand toward Daryl.

  “Come on,” Ingrid said to her.

  “Come on, where?” Rook said.

  Ingrid said, “I’m taking her.”

  Rook leapt to her feet. For a moment, her vision fluttered. The room seemed to roll to the south before settling. The palmetto bugs skittered that way, too. Daryl shrank toward her sister.

  Rook said, “What do you mean, you’re taking her?”

  Ingrid made an affectation of calm. “She’s not safe in your care. I’m taking her into custody.”

  “The hell you say.”

  Daryl’s arm was linked into Rook’s. Rook could feel the rigidity of Daryl’s posture. Even if Rook was going to allow such an outrageous thing, Daryl would never put up with it. Ingrid might as well try to walk off with a tornado.

  “I am most certainly taking her,” Ingrid said. “If you scare her, you’ll only make things worse for both of you. And quite frankly I’m concerned about you, too. I’ve called your psychiatrist and told him that you are a danger to yourself.”

  “Oh? And which psychiatrist would that be, Ingrid? The one that prescribes the Zoloft or the one that prescribes the Ambien and the trazodone?”

  But already Rook could feel her spine quaking. No way could she let Ingrid go down this path. Not one more inch.

  “I’m not goin,” Daryl said.

  Ingrid’s ice-blue gaze fixed on her. “You’re not fit to make that decision, Daryl.”

  And then Ingrid lifted her gaze to Rook. “And neither are you.”

  “Get out,” Rook said between her teeth.

  A knock at the door.

  Rook stared at it. Daryl went very still next to her, not breathing.

  Ingrid said, “The police are here.”

  “No!” Daryl shouted.

  Rook gripped her sister. The room tilted, this time to the north. Rook had to step forward to keep from falling.

  Ingrid moved toward the door and Rook darted for her, baring her teeth. But Ingrid kept moving. She opened the door to the sound of echoing rain. Policemen were standing right there on the front porch, two feet in front of the trash can with all of Adam’s money. Beyond, a frenzy of blue and red flashes in the rain. Ingrid began to talk rapidly to the officers.

  “This is my house!” Rook shouted at them. “She doesn’t have any business… no authority…”

  But they barely glanced Rook’s way, just listened intently to Ingrid’s story. And Ingrid was telling them such a story. How Daryl was in a dangerous situation. That Rook was out of control, an addict, needed help. And by God, it was true, wasn’t it? A twisted around, grotesque kind of truth. Ingrid could have just as easily told them an entirely different truth that could make them go away.

  Rook clutched her sister and turned around. Daryl turned with her, arms tight around Rook’s ribs. So tight Rook could barely breathe. They walked together toward the back door as though they shared a single mind.

  “Ma’am, hold on,” said one of the officers.

  Rook and Darryl broke into a run. Near the ceiling, the topmost palmetto bugs lifted their wings and soared upward.

  Footsteps behind her on the hardwood. “Ma’am! Stop!”

  And then there were hands on her. On her shoulders, on the arm that looped around Daryl. God, she should have taken her and left. After the Coke machine. No, before that. As soon as she got custody. Left with Daryl and disappeared somewhere.

  “Rook!” Daryl shrieked.

  They had her, hands and feet, little Daryl. Light as a feather Daryl. Fierce as a tornado Daryl. The true angel. Whose spark Rook had stolen for herself all those years ago. Daryl, whom she’d failed yet again.

  The palmetto bugs filled the air, their wings a blur. They had tails now, too. Long, curling, stinging tails. The wind sailed through the open door and thrust to life every inanimate thing in the house. Rook was on the ground though she didn’t remember falling. She might have lost balance or been thrown by the police.

  Ingrid was speaking but Rook couldn’t hear her. All she could hear were her sister’s screams. Ingrid’s hand on Rook’s forehead. Ingrid’s face looking triumphant and terrified all at once. Rook turned her head away and reached in the direction of her sister. But it was too late. They’d taken her out into the rain.

  Rook seized Ingrid and dragged her down onto the floorboards. “You can’t, she’ll get swallowed up. They’ll erase her piece by piece!”

  The palmetto bugs ruled the house. They took the curtains from the windows, shredding, and threw the restacked CDs across the room. They toppled the Coke machine once again. Pummeled against the ceiling like popcorn until it yawned upward and threw the living room open to the heavens. Rain and wind and palmetto bugs tore through the house. They swirled upward and into the storm. The neighbor’s pear tree heaved under their frenzy and hooked itself through the living room window and up to where the roof had been.

  Rook filled her lungs and screamed with all her might, “Daryl!”

  The room fell silent. The insects were gone. Daryl was gone. The flashing lights outside still threw their crazed fractals into the rain. Ingrid was there.

  “Sweetie,” she was saying. “It doesn’t have to be permanent. I had to do it. You were trying to shut me out.”

  Her voice was traveling off into the distance, her face going dark. “You were out of control…”

  Sounded so far away. Rook knew she had to hang on, though. She couldn’t let them take her sister. If they took Daryl away, she may never get her back.

  But the living room had gone dark. She could see nothing, nothing but the whitest of white as dim ghosts, like Adam’s sheets in the dark a few hours ago. The only thing she could make out was what looked like a great white heart. Over in the corner. A white heart, soft and warm, and it was beating. She watched it pulse…

  Fleecey. It was Fleecey, still twitching.

  Chapter 8

  Her limbs felt heavy, attached by magnets. At her core, her body was a furnace. The cold wind washed over, tugged at her hair, cooled the sweat as it burned from her skin. And Rook could still hear the heartbeat. Rook’s own heart, she now realized, because she could feel it radiating from her chest out toward her fingers and toes. A taste of being alive. She heard the slow pulsing, and she heard her lungs fill and release, fill and release. And with each breath, the soughing wind.

  Her vision adjusted.

  She was lying face-down on the living room floor, but the rear of the house was torn away. In its place stretched a narrow path. Tumbled stone, just like in the back yard of her parents’ old home, and it followed ahead to a circular patio of Louisiana agate, a small polished gemstone galaxy. Just the way Rook remembered it. On that patio, a woman in worn denim shorts was sweeping leaves.

  “Mama?” Rook said.

  Her mother turned. Eyes wide and dark and long-lashed. Smooth bronze skin and shining black hair. Like Rook, only older. Mother, middle-aged and weathered, but still heartbreakingly beautiful.

  Then Daryl’s tiny, cool hand slipped inside Rook’s. Little Daryl, as she was when she was just a tiny thing, three years old. Before the accident. Before the jigsaw scar, when Daryl was still whole.

  Daryl was tugging at her. Rook gathered herself up and followed. No ground beneath the tumbled stones, and no sky. Outside the path was chaos: rain and atmospheric flashes in time with the heartbeat, and howling wind. Rook could catch only r
ipples of that wind, so cool on her fevered body. But the path itself was still and straight and untouched by any rain. And yet, somehow, they were up in the stars. Daryl led Rook to their mother on the polished agate patio, and then danced off into their parents’ house.

  Rook turned in a circle. The house on Louisiana Avenue stood a distance behind her, her parents’ house was here at the patio, and ahead on the path lay the sun. Bright enough that Rook couldn’t look at it without tears.

  Her mother smoothed the hair from her face. Fingers cold like ice. Soothing Rook’s hot skin.

  Rook said, “Mama, it’s too much. I can’t take care of her. I been a monster.”

  Rook’s mother withdrew her hand and lifted Rook’s chin. “That’s because you’re just the bad news living, kiddo.”

  “They gonna put her in a home, or foster care,” Rook said.

  “Rook! Mama!” Darryl’s young voice came from above.

  Rook looked up and saw her sister on the balcony. She shook her head ‘no,’ remembering. But she said nothing. Still wondered after all these years. Because she’d already witnessed it herself. Had seen her sister lift into the air and hold, rocking slowly back to the ground like a feather.

  From somewhere inside herself, a younger version of Rook said, “She thinks she can fly.”

  “All children think that,” her mother said.

  But Rook had seen glimpses of Daryl, lighter than air, and knew what she could do. Her mother had to have witnessed it too at some point.

  Rook had left the balcony doors open so that they’d see it together.

  Young Daryl grabbed the railing, which stood taller than she was, and kicked her feet up. Her legs kept swinging upward beyond what her center of gravity could possibly command. Up to a handstand. Chubby, dimpled legs. Gangly limbs.

  Rook held her breath. She’d seen Daryl do this before.

  Her legs were vertical with the railing now, and Daryl kept somersaulting forward. Over the railing, but slow, easy, the way a dandelion seed floats on a breeze.

  Rook could tell by her expression that this wasn’t the first time Mama’d seen it, either. She watched, mesmerized, terrified.

  Daryl spun over the railing and into the air above the patio. The faster her spin, the slower her descent. She was laughing.

  Next to her, Rook’s mother screamed.

  Daryl’s body gave a start at the sound. Her legs and arms splayed. And then she fell. She dropped down to the patio with all the force and speed of a normal gravitational pull. The sound. The cracking sound.

  Rook rushed to her. Their mother kept screaming.

  “Call an ambulance!” Rook cried in her younger self’s voice.

  She turned her sister over. She was limp. Her chest did not rise and fall. Rook couldn’t find a pulse. Blood was covering the left half of Daryl’s face where the jigsaw scar would be, but that wasn’t all, this time around Rook could see, or rather feel, what else was leaving her sister’s body. Something other than blood leaking from her. Something far more vital.

  Rook screamed at the blaring light of the sun, “You see, I nearly killed her then!”

  Rook put her lips to her sister’s lips, just as she’d done all those years ago, and breathed.

  One, two, three, four, five, six.

  And this time, this time, she tasted that force. The oxygen Rook was giving to Daryl paled in comparison to the powerful thing Daryl was exchanging back to Rook.

  Rook cried out toward that blinding sun, “It’s too much. I ain’t responsible enough to handle all this.”

  One, two, three, four, five, six.

  She cradled her sister in her arms, saying, “I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry. I can’t lose you but I don’t know what to do. I’m turning into a monster.”

  From behind, her mother put her hand to her shoulder. Rook looked up.

  Her mother said, “But you’re supposed to be the monster now.”

  Chapter 9

  She opened her eyes.

  A glowing plastic bar hung above her. She blinked at it. A fluorescent light. Her gaze traveled beyond it to a suspended ceiling. And then circling nearer in, a clear plastic IV bag that went drip, drip, drip, down to a tube that snaked its way into her arm. Back to her very own body again.

  She wasn’t alone. Someone nearby. She sat up.

  “Glad you could finally join us.”

  Someone was crouched on the floor over Adam, who was wrapped in a smoldering sheet.

  Wait, no, that wasn’t right.

  Rook opened her mouth and vomited. Nothing came out but sudsy, blackish drool.

  Adam was not wrapped in a burning sheet. Adam wasn’t even here. Rook fought to concentrate on the person crouching there. A heavy set nurse in pink scrubs, tying her shoe.

  “Still at it, huh?” The nurse said, eyeing the vomit as she rose and went to the sink.

  She wet a paper towel and then used it to wipe the film off Rook’s chin. “I don’t have time to change you again. If you want you can put on your own—”

  Rook knocked her away. “What happened? Where’s my sister?”

  The nurse put her hands to her hips. “’What happened’ is you tried to die on pills and stupidity. ‘Where’s your sister’ is something I don’t know.”

  She picked up the paper towel and threw it into the trash with a hard frown for Rook, then went back to what she was doing, which was making a notation on a clipboard. “You s’posed to check into the psych ward after the doctor releases you, but that ain’t gonna happen now.”

  “How long have I been here?” Rook asked.

  “Since before I got back from my vacation. Few days.”

  Now Rook was wide awake. “I need to make a phone call.”

  “What you need is to keep your butt in that bed and be still till the gurney get here. Got a category four hurricane comin. We evacuatin out.”

  Rook shouted, “I need to make a phone call!” and the nurse went flying backward. She hit the wall with a thud. She hadn’t stumbled. Hadn’t fallen. She’d flown backwards. Her feet staggered as though she’d jumped from a great height. Rook knew she’d somehow done this to her.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening.” Rook put her hands to her head.

  They were still so loud. The heartbeat. The breath moving in and out of her lungs. It made her want to lie back down and go to sleep. But she had to find Daryl first.

  She ripped the IV out of her arm and it started to beep.

  The nurse stared at her, started to say, “You can’t—” but then revised and said, “Your things’re in here.”

  She opened a drawer and then walked toward the hall muttering, “Don’t let the door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha.”

  The IV was still beeping. Rook found her things wadded up in a plastic bag in the drawer—her filthy clothes that had been wet from the rain. They now reeked of mildew. No cell phone. She threw on cargo pants and sandals, but kept the vomited-on hospital gown instead of the moldy, vile tee shirt.

  The corridor was full of gurneys and hospital staff and patients standing around or sitting in wheelchairs. Her own nurse was talking to someone at the desk, throwing a foreboding stare Rook’s way. Rook turned and strode in the opposite direction.

  People clustered around the elevator. Rook kept walking until she found the stairs. The sign said “Emergency Exit; Alarm Will Sound,” but the door was propped open and the alarm seemed to be disabled. Rook went down, not sure where exactly she was going, but kept descending until it felt like she was at the main floor.

  Daryl. She might be with Ingrid. But more likely Daryl would have pitched an epic fit, one that no one out there was willing to ride out the way Rook would have done, and so Daryl would have been committed to a children’s psych ward somewhere. Or worse, a juvenile group facility.

  The main corridor led to a wide open emergency room. There were even more people out here. Beyond the glass doors, buses and military vehicles crammed the parking lot. Nationa
l Guardsmen in BDUs. Hospital staff and security guards all looking frazzled, with lines and lines of patients assembled in various sectors both inside and outside.

  Rook frowned. A hurricane, the nurse had said. Rook passed through the double doors and was immediately met by a damp breeze of considerable force, but nothing that unusual. Yet. She stepped to where an ambulance blocked the path of the wind.

  “Hey,” someone said, and he touched Rook’s elbow.

  Rook turned. He’d been standing behind the open door of the ambulance next to a palette stacked with cases of bottled water. She had no idea who he was. But then she nearly jumped out of her shoes when her gaze settled on his nametag: Speck.

  “You check in here to detox?” he asked her.

  She backed up an inch. “I was only on prescription.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  She scowled. “Doctor said it’s all out of my system now anyway.”

  A lie, as she hadn’t talked to whichever doctor had been assigned to her. All she’d managed to do was freak some poor nurse.

  He said, “Are you getting on one of the buses?”

  “No.”

  “So you got another way to evacuate.”

  She frowned at him but said nothing. He was watching her face.

  She tried to turn it back on him. “Are you evacuating?”

  “No. But it’s different for me. I’m part of emergency management.”

  She snorted and turned to go, but he said, “Look. We gotta round everybody up. I know you think you got places to go, but you’re better off just getting on the bus and getting the hell out of here, believe me.”

  His look was one of exhausted annoyance. Rook felt the same way.

  But then she asked him, “Can I use your cell phone?”