Only the Light We Make

by James Dean

  The mirror revealed the eyes of a tired young black woman. It wouldn't be long before she exhibited her final show and then walked down the aisle at graduation.

  Graduation, another uphill battle. Hopefully, after four years, holding that diploma would make every trial and tribulation worth it.

  She turned back to the painting. The paint didn't speak to her. Every time she stared at the work in progress, from application, to subject matter, to concept, it screamed, "student work." She didn't have much time left, but if she started something new, she might be able to finish it in time.

  "Girl, you're in a rut."

  The student work was replaced and a new, fresh, white canvas took its place. The old painting faced the wall where she didn't have to stare at the failure. She reached for the radio but stopped, every local station kept playing the same message about the flu. She pulled out her earbuds. Just as she was about to slide in the second small white earphone, a crash sounded from down the hall. The building housed the studio space of all the senior painting majors, at least thirty other people labored here.

  "You okay?"

  She wasn't close to many of the people in her department. However, impromptu critique groups were readily available. With the world going to shit, it shouldn't surprise her. They probably came in to work out some angst.

  The hallway seemed to stretch forever, rooms on either side leading into private studio spaces. "Do you need some help?"

  She grabbed the palette knife from amidst her paints, tightening her grip as she walked down the hallway. Black chicks never made it to the third act of a horror movie. Pausing at each doorway, she spun around the corners like she aced SWAT training. Every room revealed canvases and paint tubes, but nothing seeming to make the crash.

  "I know you're in there." The last door. She could hear the rustling inside. "I have a knife and I have no problem cutting you."

  She eased her head around the corner, knowing full well some scary shit was about to happen. Inside the space, a student's feet were trapped in the base of an easel. They only made a half-hearted attempt to untangle themselves. The moment the student caught a glimpse of her, they anxiously tried to reach for her.

  "Do you need some help?"

  Teeth. It snapped at her with its teeth bared. She pulled back her hand. "Shit boy, you got the..."

  This was not the flu. His nose wasn't running, and a can of chicken noodle soup wouldn't fix this. With her hand held out, she watched as he snapped again. His eyes were milky, making it difficult to see the color of his eyes. His hands reached out, fingers lazily grasping at air. His right hand was covered in blood, but as clear as day, she saw the bite mark.

  "Zombies," she paused after saying the word. She didn't know if it was a faux pas to call the undead zombies during the apocalypse. In every movie, they came up with clever names for the living dead, walkers, undead, biters, but no, they were zombies. "It's not the flu."

  She wished she had seen a few more episodes of Doomsday Preppers. Everybody joked about their survival plan, the method in which they would survive the zombie apocalypse. She'd hot wire a car, grab her parents, head north. Somewhere in northern Maine, or perhaps Canada if they allowed her in, she'd set up residency. Zombies couldn't move in the snow, she'd be safe. Between hunting and warding off the stray zombies, she'd become an expert marksman and carry a sword or a bat, she just needed to get there.

  Nobody's plan for the apocalypse actually went according to plan.

  Instead of eradicating the zombie threat, she stepped out of the room and pulled the door shut. Did zombies know how to open doors?

  The world slowed. She wondered is this what shock felt like? At any moment, her heart might start pounding out of fear. For the moment, she couldn't help but think that student just failed out of art school.

  The hallway seemed a bit more terrifying than the zombie struggling to eat her alive. From any of the doors, a flesh eating zombie could lunge. The knot in her chest started to tighten and she paused to take a few steadying breaths. She focused on her breathing, ignoring the fact the world was ending.

  "I checked the doors. The studio area has two exits. The other fire door has an alarm, so that's safe." Every fact brought her back to her senses. "This exit leads to the hallway, then to the lobby surrounded by doors. Too many doors. School was cancelled, maybe I'm lucky."

  She didn't believe it, but she accepted the lie.

  *****

  Now.

  On the first floor of the Museum of Fine Arts, armed with her stolen officer's sword she began stalking. The zombies, unlike in the movies made almost no sound. No breathing, no moaning, just hungry, gaping maws. She discovered that quickly as she secured the studio building days ago. The zombies were scary because they attacked in silence.

  She headed toward the lobby. One glass case blurred into another. Her focus remained on finding the zombie lurking somewhere inside her temporary home. The American wars exhibit turned into Asian tapestries as she reached the front. Before the apocalypse, patrons entering the museum were greeted by a massive staircase leading to the European paintings. Up the staircase she went.

  Every time her right foot touched down, pain radiated through her ankle. The bandages and the copious amounts of Tylenol she had taken earlier reminded her how much she hated Leslie.

  "I am going to kill you," she hissed.

  She remembered back to how still the school had been. The studios connected to an academic building, something you might find at a traditional school. As she reached the lobby the first moment of madness took place. She didn't have an issue with a zombie trying to eat her, she'd seen weirder things at art school. It wouldn't surprise her if the zombie had been placed there as part of an installation. No, outside the glass doors lining the lobby, an ambulance hit a car, tipping up on to its side. She would have chalked it up to Boston traffic, until a man crawled out of the vehicle's opened rear doors. The same pale skin tone and vacant look on its face as the one she left in the studio.

  Zombies. Officially, a big problem.

  A hand smacked against one of the doors, a dead illustration professor's. Well, kind of dead. The hand left a smudge of red across the glass. People were getting out of cars and running, the zombie from the ambulance shambling after them. The professor's forehead leaned against the glass, her expressionless face intent on Judith. The zombie banged, pressed against the door, but never reached for the handle.

  "Thank God for doorknobs."

  A bang sounded, bringing her back to the reality unfolding further out in the street. One of Boston's finest held his gun with both hands, barking orders at a blood soaked paramedic. He pulled the trigger four more times, each bullet tightly grouped in the zombie's chest. The zombie staggered, unaware of the holes in the center of its chest. The zombie fell atop of the officer, taking him to the ground. Judith pushed the image from her mind. She didn't need to think of people as food.

  The lobby was a hazard, too many glass doors looked inside. There were exits out the back of the building that wouldn't contain as many people as the main street. If she got lucky, she'd be able to escape. But to what? The bigger question hovered over her head, if she survived this onslaught, what would be left?

  "Not now, brain."

  The walls of the school held work produced by the best students as she ran toward the back of the building. It had been a rough year for her. Nowhere did her work adorn the campus walls. She spent most of her time picking up the pieces from a devastatingly failed relationship. While she should have been exploring the depths of her psyche with paintbrush, she sat in her bedroom emptying pints of ice cream. She knew Leslie would be trouble, but she fell in love regardless.

  At the end of the hall housing the graphic design majors, a man flew from a doorway against the wall. The outstretched arms gave away his less-than-living status. With enthusiasm he reached toward the living. There must be a living person in the room. Before the man clambered to his feet, a figure lunged from the
doorway, jabbing a long object into the man's face multiple times. The person brought back what looked like a pipe and swung, once, twice, and then a third time. The zombie's head vanished, replaced by a bloody stump.

  The person turned around, the light flooding in through windows behind them making it difficult to see. Within a few steps, Judith recognized the slightly awkward walk from a long-since-healed busted knee.

  "Leslie..."

  *****

  She snapped back to the present. The sight of large paintings by European Masters rewarded her climbing the grand staircase. Oil paintings filled forty foot tall walls with scenes of hunting dogs, young gentlemen posing, and ladies being wooed. The room housed one or two paintings she recognized from a textbook, but the grandeur of the space always made her feel small. She paused in quiet contemplation, admiring the stillness.

  "I might be the last eyes to see you. The last living eyes at least."

  The pain in her leg steadily increased. She wanted to sit, rest her leg, even ice it, but the apocalypse descended upon Boston. Thousands, maybe millions of its residents fell victim to the zombie pandemic. While people were dying outside of the museum, she complained about a sprained ankle. The foolishness of it made her laugh. She pushed on. No matter how bad it got, she'd always push on.

  *****

  On day three of the apocalypse, the world went silent. The radio Leslie salvaged from one of the student studios spit out the emergency warning, telling people to make it to a quarantine zone in Cambridge. Now, the black box hissed with static. Judith assumed everybody who braved the outdoors to make it to the military zone were dead too. Boston was not an easy city to navigate.

  The water still ran, but food in an academic building had been something of a problem. Judith had been thankful one of the faculty meeting rooms contained sandwiches covered in plastic wrap. She didn't trust the egg salad, but she had been willing to risk eating the turkey a day past its prime. Now, only a stack of crackers and a bag of chocolate remained thanks to the diabetic screen printing professor.

  "We need to get out of here."

  Judith didn't like either option. Stay and starve or flee and be eaten. Irony. "How bad do you think the city has gotten?"

  From the second floor, they could see over the balcony to the lobby below. The beauty of glass doors; they let in light. The downside of glass doors during the zombie apocalypse; they don't make for good hiding. Peering over the ledge, three zombies staggered about in front of the building. They took tiny steps, one pushing against the glass trying to get in, not understanding the invisible barrier keeping it out.

  "We can't go out the front," Judith whispered.

  "I can take them."

  "There could be more."

  "I'll fuck them up too."

  The woman didn't have the ability to see anything beyond herself. Stubborn. Rude. Obnoxious. First she'd state her opinion like fact, then she'd get mad when Judith didn't agree. Judith had accepted the flaws. When Leslie broke it off, she nearly lost her mind. Now, she had some distance to see what went wrong.

  "Or die trying." The jabs weren't so subtle anymore. Leslie ignored the bait. Apparently she had grown since they were together.

  "Let's check the back, we can probably get to the museum."

  Food. The museum held food. It might not be much, but bags of chips, bottled water, even stale cake at this point would be good. They also had a bar. There'd be booze. It might not help their cause, but Judith couldn't dismiss her eagerness for bourbon.

  They darted down the hallway, pausing at every corner, listening for the sound of movement. They reached the south end of the building, an area they had yet to inspect.

  They turned the corner down the stairwell heading toward the exit on the first floor and stopped dead in their tracks. Eyes watered as the smell hit her, she tried to breathe through her mouth, but the stench hung so heavily, she tasted the nasty. She didn't need to hear the zombies to know they were somewhere nearby.

  Leslie ignored the warning signs and continued.

  The stink mixed loosened bowels and rotting flesh. The odor reminded her of her fridge last semester when she accidentally kicked the power cable loose and the food spoiled.

  Leslie screamed.

  Fists pounded against a door of the photography studio. Leslie's screaming drove them to agitation, bloody palms smacking against the door. The narrow glass window in the door showed at least three of them, each pushing hard to breach the door toward their prey.

  Judith would expect a normal person to freeze, maybe even faint. No, when Leslie got scared, it quickly turned to anger. Leslie reached for the handle to the door, ready to unleash zombies into their safe, living, undead free hallway. She’d risk their lives for her bravado. Judith interrupted the motion, grabbing her hand.

  "Keep running."

  Leslie wanted to fight. Fists clenched as she debated on what to do next. The door shifted, one of the hinges relenting to the eager zombies inside. Judith pulled at her ex's arm, forcing her to follow.

  The end of the hall turned right and after jumping over three steps, they stood at the fire doors. Between them and the daylight, two inches of metal. With a single push, they'd be away from the safety of the school and left to fend for themselves in the open spaces of Boston.

  The Museum of Fine Art hosted artwork from around the world. With women being a rare find in European artwork, she found herself surprised by the "Women Masters," exhibit. Her brain fast forwarded through her art history classes and only a few names came to mind. She hoped beyond hope she'd find the painting she obsessed over in...

  In the middle of the lengthy room, a faux wall stood with a single painting on it. Artemisia Gentileschi's rage came into focus as Judith approached the wall. The irony of the painting's title, Judith Beheading Holofernes, was far from lost on her. She remembered discovering the title and wishing her mom had named her after the woman in the painting.

  A man laid on his bed in agony as a midwife held his arms at bay and Judith slit his throat. The brutality in the painting spoke to her. The blood sprayed on the white linens resembled the blood along the walls of the studio. The violence didn't faze her. The battered skulls and gnawed flesh, she barely felt anything at all. She understood the woman in the painting.

  Supposedly Artemisia painted the woman with her own face. The man being slaughtered had been painted to resemble a man who raped her. Artemisia's rage translated in the painting as a look of calm crossed the painted figure's face as she severed the man's head. The sword suddenly felt heavy. The sheath slid off the blade, and clanked as it hit the ground.

  "You're stunning," Judith voiced softly as she leaned in to get a closer look of the painting. The artist fought to use careful, deliberate brush strokes while swallowing her disgust for the man. Her face, half hidden by shadows blended relief and resolve. Judith gripped the handle firmly. Staring into the painting, she had brief moment where she understood Artemisia and even Judith.

  Judith's remained fixated. If she stepped away from the painting, if she blinked, the painting no longer existed. Unlike closing time at the end of a long day, the painting would not wait for the next patron to gaze into it and see the terrors of the world unfold.

  "I could be the last." The words, once said aloud chilled her bones. The dead probably outnumbered the living already. Zombies didn't care about thinks like paint application, layered meanings, or element composition. No, once she left here, this painting ceased to exist. The thought pained her heart.

  With one last appreciative glance, she said her farewell. "I hope somebody finds you," she said, not sure if she was talking to the painting or herself.

  *****

  "What about the fire door's alarm?"

  Leslie shook her head. "It won't go off without electricity."

  Leslie's shoulder slammed into the fire door. The alarm sounded, a screeching sound piercing through the stillness of building. Judith wanted to cuss at the girl. The longer she spent with
Leslie, the more she realized the breakup had been for the best. Now, in the warmth of the midday sun, she wanted to break up with her again. Her pigheadedness would be the death of them.

  Two parking lots and a narrow street separated them from the museum. It didn't seem like many zombies, maybe twenty separated them from the building. Judith didn't waste time. The torn apart faces turned in their direction. They responded to noise. The buzzer was an extremely loud noise.

  "Run," she shouted at Leslie.

  Judith sprinted, slipping between two cars. The closest zombie changed directions at the sight of a speedy meal. It bumped into a car. Judith was thankful enough vehicles littered the street. She'd have plenty of obstacles to put between her and them.

  She made note of the curb as she ran, if she broke her ankle, she'd die. It'd be her luck to be defeated by ill-fitting footwear. She had at least fifty feet between her and the closest zombie, plenty of room to maneuver around cars and dodge the undead. A quick walk with a zig and a zag and she'd be at the museum parking lot.

  Zombies captured inside cars banged on windows as she scurried by. Focus, she ignored glimpsing inside. Car seats, or gnawed spouses, she didn't want to see what might have happened to turn these poor unfortunate souls. She only slowed as she inspected the museum, looking for an unguarded door.

  "I see a door," she said in a loud whisper.

  He sprint slowed to a trot and finally she stopped. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Leslie stuck between two cars with zombies blocking her in. Leslie shoved a zombie out of her way, sending it to the ground as she jumped over the moving corpse.

  Judith screamed too late. A zombie reached from an open car window, grabbing Leslie's hand. Its mouth clamped down. The expression on her ex's face gave away the pain. As she yanked her hand back, blood coated the front of her clothes.