Sundered

by Shannon Mayer

  The long hours, hard work, and emotional stress taxed us, making us both edgy and out of sorts, not even leaving us enough energy to make love, unusual for us. The day before the power went out, we checked the TV as we did each morning and each night. For the first time in over a week there was an announcement of sorts.

  “Mara, come here, the TV’s on,” Sebastian called out. I ran downstairs, a towel wrapped around my hair.

  There was no announcer, just a single picture like a page out of a book that scrolled up on a continual loop.

  I read it out loud as it went. “All areas of North America are now considered dangerous territory, as is the North and West of South America, all of Australia, Europe, and much of Asia.”

  There was a long stretch of blank screen and then a last warning.

  I read it slowly, disbelief and a low thrum of resignation settled over me.

  “All remaining residents from these named continents are now considered independent of any government, agency, or military command. We consider . . .”

  That’s where it ended. The screen blinked and slid into white fuzzy static, reminding me of the twilight zone. I grabbed the remote and turned the TV off.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, already suspecting the answer, but wanting Sebastian to say it out loud.

  He reached up and took my hand. “We’re on our own, babe. That’s what it means. No one’s going to come help us or try to get us out of here. They’re going to let nature take its course, just like Dan said, and hope the Nevermores die off.”

  I squeezed his hand and slid into his lap. He circled his arms around me and we held each other tight, the fear surrounding us. “We’ve still got each other,” I said.

  Sebastian didn’t answer me, just laid his head against my breast, his breathing uneven as if he were holding back tears.

  The next day, two weeks in, the power finally went and we had to break out the flashlights and candles, hoarding them, using them only when necessary. It was at that point that we realized we needed to dig a latrine of some sort. Shit—in the most literal sense of the word.

  Worse than that realization, was the fact that we were through half our food stores—not that we had much to begin with—and our garden was a long way from producing.

  “We’re just going to have to cut back some more,” I said, staring at our already meagre meal of pasta and a half a can of tuna cooked over the barbecue. Come winter we could use the wood stove and the old wood-burning stove I’d thought to replace for heat and cooking. But there were so many things on the list of needed items: candles, seeds for the garden, and canning equipment, just to name a few.

  Sebastian scrubbed his hands through his hair, his wedding band catching the last rays of the setting sun. I watched as it slid around, bumping up against his knuckle. The weight we were both losing was a testament to our hard work and lack of nutrition.

  I started to laugh at the irony of the situation.

  “What’s so funny?”

  I gulped the laughter down enough to answer him. “We’ve wanted to lose weight for so long and all it took was for the world to shut down.” Another peal of laughter ripped its way out of me, leaving me shaking and gasping for air, tears running down my cheeks. Hilarity rarely gripped me and now I seemed unable to shake its grasp.

  He frowned at me, which only made me laugh harder; lack of food, poor sleep, and hard work making me giddy. I sat on the floor and the laughter rolled out of me, Nero dancing around my head woofing and making me howl all the louder. Sebastian got up, left his plate of food and went outside, the back door slamming behind him.

  I lay on the cool tile of the kitchen floor till the laughter subsided and the tears threatened to start. I forced them back, refused to let them get a hold of me. I wouldn’t let the fear rise again. We weren’t going to die here, we were going to live and survive. Nero lay down beside me, ever attentive, the perfect puppy, and I was grateful he took to his sit-stay commands so well. I couldn’t have handled an unruly dog with all that had been happening. I let my hand rest on his quickly-growing body for a moment. What were we going to do about him? We could barely feed ourselves and the dog food was diminishing as fast as our own.

  I stood slowly, wobbling a little, the distant thud of axe and wood telling me where Sebastian was. I ate half my meal and covered the rest with plastic wrap, something else we were nearly out of.

  Crap. I knew I’d made a mess of it with Bastian. I headed outside, Nero at my heels and Sebastian’s plate in hand to find him chopping wood, sweat dripping down his rapidly slimming frame. He would always be a big guy, but it was scary to see how fast he, especially, was losing weight.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve pulled it together,” I said in between chops. Sebastian lowered the blade and half turned to me.

  “It’s okay. I suppose from time to time you’re going to have breakdowns. It’s to be expected. As long as you can always pull yourself up and out of it,” he said. I handed him his plate and he sat down on a log to eat.

  “Well, it’s not like I’m going to be here by myself, right? You’re not planning on doing a walk about in the middle of the night, go for some sort of marathon run to see if you can outdistance the pack, are you?” I smiled at him and he gave me a half-hearted smile back.

  “No, not planning on it.”

  I blinked hard, wondering at the sudden fear that gripped me. Was he trying to say something without saying it?

  “What’s wrong, Bastian? I know this is a crap situation, I know it’s not how we planned our lives, but we are alive and we still have each other. That’s all that matters.” I sat down beside him. A rattle drew our attention to the gate, Scout making motions at us, more than usual. He grunted and pointed at the food on the plate.

  Sebastian stood and walked to the gate without a word, Nero whining the closer he got to the Nevermore. Scout backed off, obviously intimidated by his size until Sebastian held the plate of food out to him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, the scene disturbing me. Why was he showing kindness to the Nevermore? Why would he give him food that we had so little of, which we so desperately needed?

  Scout slunk forward cautiously, his eyes downcast until he was right at the gate, Sebastian towering over him. One shaking hand reached out to grab some noodles, streaking back to his mouth so fast I could barely track it with my eyes.

  A second time he reached out to grab the food and as his hands grasped noodles, Sebastian’s big hand clamped down on his arm. Scout squealed - which set Nero off barking like a mad man - and tried to pull away but couldn’t. Sebastian held on to him, not doing anything but holding, Scout squealing and screeching so loud and high pitched I found myself on my feet, heart pumping ready to run.

  “Bastian, he’s calling the others,” I said, fear blooming once more. We’d been almost back to normal; I could almost forget the scene of Tom’s death, of the pack surrounding our property, of Jessica going off with the Alpha.

  “I know.”

  Two words, so simple and yet they meant so much. He wanted Scout to call the pack in, but, why?

  Rustling in the bushes was the only warning we had before the Nevermores exploded onto the road, screaming and gnashing their teeth. They were thinner than the last time I’d seen them, but they didn’t seem worse for the wear, their energy still high.

  I searched the group, standing on my tiptoes and finally standing on a log to see if Jessica was with them.

  “She’s at the back!” I said, “She looks okay.” She was thin, her clothes ragged, but unlike some of the others who had scars and missing pieces of hair, she looked . . . like the queen of the pack. The Alpha male stepped out of the bush and put his hand on her shoulder, claiming her while he stared at Sebastian.

  “What does he think? That you’re going to fight him for her?” I asked more to myself but Sebastian heard me.

  “That’s exactly what he thinks. I’m bigger, stronger, and younger. A threat to his position in the
hierarchy of the pack,” he said.

  “But you aren’t.”

  Sebastian turned to look at me, his eyes sad; my heart dropped.

  “Mara, the results from the fertility tests came back while you were out of it. It wasn’t you that had fertility problems, it was me. The day I gave you Nero, when I went into town . . .”

  I started to shake my head, backing away, half falling off the log and stumbling over Nero.

  “No, no you didn’t, you wouldn’t have. You said that it was stupid, that there was no way you would ever . . .” The world swayed around me and I fell to my knees, grabbing at the axe for support.

  Sebastian walked to me, and turned me so that we both faced the gate and the pack beyond it. His hands were hot on my bare flesh and I began to itch, the concentration of broom in his body coming through in his sweat. It finally made sense and I understood my reactions at strange times, after he kissed me or we made love, my body responded to the concentrate within his system and I had to take antihistamines. I was allergic to him, to what he was becoming.

  I let out a moan and he held me tight.

  “I’m sorry Mara, I took the shot.” He looked me in the eye, his own beginning to tint a light yellow that I’d been telling myself was just the way the light reflected on his iris.

  “I took Nevermore.”

  10

  I sobbed into his chest, pounded on it in a fit of rage that he could do this to me, that he would be leaving me, forgetting that if I’d had it my way, it would be the other way around.

  The pack dispersed, once more stymied by the gate and their inability to climb it or unlock it, melting back into the bush as if they had never been there.

  All that was left was Scout, who stared at us with his slitted eyes and rattled the gate to get our attention. In less than three weeks, that would be Sebastian, outside the property, an animal who no longer loved me, an animal who would as soon eat me as make love to me.

  I stood up, pushing away from him, anger and pain at war with one another inside my heart. “I need to be alone.”

  “You’re going to get a lot of that in the not too distant future, probably more than you want. I would take advantage of the time we have.”

  I spun on my heel, ready to slap him. “You asshole! Why didn’t you tell me you’d taken the shot?”

  He frowned and shook his head, “I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “It’s my right to worry! I’m your wife, if anyone should know that you’re going to turn into an animal, it’s me!” I yelled at him. Nero whimpered at my feet, upset by the yelling; I bent and scooped him into my arms.

  “The right time didn’t come up. And I wasn’t sure at first, I didn’t feel any different, I wasn’t losing weight, but at the clinic they said that might not happen as fast to me because of my size,” he said, shrugging his shoulder, lowering his eyes.

  I stomped off towards the backyard and the garden, the sudden urge to kill something leaving me only one option. Pulling weeds. Over my shoulder I yelled, “The right time was the minute you figured it out.”

  I froze at the sight in front of me. Three deer stood in my garden neatly pruning every last shoot of a vegetable that had come up in the last week, their ability to jump the fence giving them the edge over the Nevermores who also wanted in. I wanted to cry, I wanted to yell and scream and throw things. I put Nero down, and as I did I scooped up a rock, hurling it at the four-legged interlopers. I missed by an easy mile and had to settle for running at them full speed down a slight slope, Nero woofing and running full tilt which wasn’t any faster than me, following them well into the open field. As they scattered, I slipped, tumbling the last of the way down, coming to rest on what had been my pea patch.

  “Mara, are you okay?” Sebastian asked as he lifted me gently to a sitting position. I nodded tucked my face into the crook of his neck, breathing in his scent, trying hard not to think about what was coming.

  “I’ll help you get ready, babe, I won’t leave you here without the things you’re going to need.”

  “That gives me little solace when I know that you won’t love me anymore,” I whispered.

  He was silent for so long that I wasn’t sure he heard me. It was the shuddering that started deep in his body that made me sit back. Tears streamed down his face, washing lines of dirt and grime away leaving streaks of almost-clean skin.

  “I will always love you, no matter how far my mind goes, no matter what I become; my love for you will never change. I couldn’t imagine my life with anyone else, Mara, and these last four years have been the best part of my whole life. I wouldn’t change a thing.” At my raised eyebrow he conceded, “Well, maybe one thing.”

  He stroked my face with his hands and he whispered against my lips, “I didn’t tell you enough how much I love you, didn’t always cherish you the way I should have, but I will always, always love you, no matter what comes.” He kissed me softly and I leaned into it. If this was all I had left with him, I would take every minute of it; my anger washed away in a wave of love so strong I thought my heart might burst. We clung to each other until the tide of emotion that swelled around us receded and we could both breathe a little easier. I leaned back from him to stare into the face that I would love no matter what it looked like.

  “What are we waiting for then?” I asked, pulling him to his feet.

  He cocked his head and stared at me. I winked and started to slide my shirt over my head. It took him a brief moment, then he was there helping me undress - as I helped him - and we made love in the garden. It wasn’t like we were going to be damaging the crops or anything, and we took our time, savouring each touch, each kiss, as if they were our last, breaking up only when Nero came romping back, woofing and leaping at us as we held each other tight.

  11

  “I’m going, Mara. I have less than a week, a few days maybe, and it’s a window of opportunity we can’t let pass,” Sebastian said as he dressed. It was early, pre-dawn, and we’d been arguing about this subject most of the night.

  “Bastian, the Alpha male, if he catches you outside the gate he’ll attack you. Maybe he’ll even be able to turn the whole pack against you,” I said shadowing my husband as he searched our closet for the extra knapsack.

  “That’s why I’m going so early, you know that Scout’s never been here before the sun is up. I’ll raid as many of the houses as I can. You need the food, and you can’t go. It’s like with Jessica, they won’t touch me, I’m one of them.”

  I snorted, “Nobody wants to get laid by you. That’s what they wanted from her, and you know that.”

  “Hey. That’s not nice, or true. I can think of at least one person who wants to get laid by me.” He bent and kissed me on the lips the tingle not all due to our chemistry. Mostly now it was due to the drug I was so allergic to, rushing through his system.

  I followed him downstairs where he grabbed the flashlight, a hammer and the big kitchen knife. In the dim light he looked like a burglar, which was appropriate considering what he was going to do.

  “Did you write me a list at least? I don’t want any complaints that you didn’t get everything you wanted.” He smiled at me, trying to ease the tension I suppose. I let out a breath, knowing he was going to do this whether I wanted him to or not. I was losing the battle in large part because I knew he was right. I needed him to get food and supplies, and he needed to do this one last thing for me, to be my husband and knight in shining armour.

  I sat down and lit a candle so I could see enough to write. The list was simple, any preserves he could carry, batteries, feminine hygiene products, Benadryl or other allergy medicine—any medicine for that matter—bow and arrow set, garden seeds … I tapped the pencil against my teeth. What else was there?

  I shrugged. “I can’t think of anything else.”

  Sebastian took the list from me and tucked it into his pocket. “I don’t know how long I’ll be, babe, but try not to worry.” He bent and kissed me goodbye, patted Nero on
the head, and then blew out the candle. As he left, the door clicking behind him, a sense of finality settled over me. This was it, in little more than a week I would truly be on my own. This was like a test run on what was about to be the rest of my life.

  I sat there till the sun rose, warming the room and forcing me to admit in the light of day that I was on my own.

  I cleaned the house, pulled weeds in the defunct garden, checked fences, pulled water from the well, picked rocks out of the lawn and small pasture, and washed the clothes by hand, hanging them to dry on a makeshift clothesline. By late afternoon I had done a lot and was eyeing up the axe and woodpile. Sebastian was right. I was going to have to learn to do this on my own.