The Pulse

by Skylar Finn

  “Can she hear this, by the way?” asked Peterman looking at Grace, concerned. She stared back at him witheringly. I bit back a smile. Adults always made the mistaken assumption that Grace, being a child, was naive and fragile. Grace met their condescension with a kind of dignified disgust, as if she pitied the intellect of the adult who wasted her time with such insipid and misguided stereotypes. It was one of the things I liked best about her.

  “Grace knows the lay of the land,” said Ethan dismissively. He despised people who babied children and kept them sheltered from reality. His frankness with Grace was both admirable and unsettling. He told me long before I ever met her that he never wanted her to be blindsided by the world, having been told some fairy tale under the pretense of preserving her childhood longer. He said that if it became serious enough between us for me to meet her, that no matter what, I must never lie to her.

  “My child is innocent,” he said. “The world is not.”

  Now, Grace gave a little sniff and turned away from Peterman. “Are you okay?” I said softly, with a gentle tug on her ponytail.

  Grace gazed at me, her dark eyes wide and serious. She opened her mouth to reply, but her answer was swallowed by an ear-splitting siren.

  6

  Everyone looked up at the sound. Peterman had real fear on his face. Ethan looked mildly to moderately alarmed. Grace covered her ears to keep out the eardrum-shattering, piercing sound as it echoed repetitively across the school grounds. It was so loud that you could barely hear the shouts and cries of mounting hysteria.

  “What is that?” I had to yell at Ethan, even though he was sitting right next to me. He shook his head.

  “Whatever it is, it means we need to get out of here,” he yelled back. “Where did you park?” Peterman watched our exchange, wide-eyed.

  I started to answer, but I was cut off by a prolonged burst of machine gun fire. It was coming from the front of school. I watched the police I’d seen earlier rush from the building towards the source of the noise.

  Ethan jumped down from the bridge, reaching for Grace. I supported her as she climbed down into Ethan’s arms. He held his hand out for me, and I jumped down after Grace. He positioned me ahead of him and I ran towards the back of the school, where I’d hidden the Jeep. Ethan ran after me, holding Grace’s hand.

  People poured through the doors of the school, rushing from every exit with looks of panic and fear. “What’s going on?” someone screamed.

  “Everyone, go back inside,” yelled the man I’d seen earlier, the one with the clipboard. “We are dealing with the situation. You need--”

  We didn’t hear what we needed as he toppled to the ground. A large man with a fearful expression had just body-checked him from behind in his rush to get out of the building. The man with the clipboard was immediately trampled by the onslaught of people sprinting away from the building. They stepped right on him in their haste to flee.

  “Stop it!” Ethan yelled, shoving the nearest person away. The stranger stumbled sideways and kept going without a backwards glance. “You’re stepping on somebody! What’s the matter with you?” Ethan’s yells served to cause the nearest people to look down at the ground and run around the man instead of stepping on him. Ethan helped him to his feet.

  “Thank you,” he gasped. There was a cut near his hairline and a boot print on his cheek.

  “Ethan, we need to go now,” I said urgently. I grabbed his hand. We both held tightly to each of Grace’s hands so no one could knock her over. Hordes of panic-stricken people rushed around us as if we were rocks in a swiftly-moving stream.

  “Where are we going?” I looked over my shoulder. Peterman. I’d forgotten he was even there. I didn’t bother responding. I moved forward with Grace and Ethan in tow, pushing against against everyone running in the opposite direction.

  Glass shattered against the pavement behind us. I turned to see at least twenty people advancing toward the police barricade, which now looked extremely temporary and flimsy. Some wore ski masks and others had bandanas covering the lower halves of their faces. Many had on what looked to be crude, homemade body armor. Most were armed. The ones that weren’t carried bottles holding gasoline-soaked rags and lit them. They launched them over the barricade in our direction. One sailed into a nearby medical tent, which immediately went up in flames.

  We changed our direction and ran towards the school. So many people had poured out of the building that the crowd was starting to thin out the closer we got to the doors. We ran inside. The hallways were all but abandoned now. I stopped near a classroom, the hall outside plastered with colorful drawings: houses, cars, smiling people. It was a stark contrast to the chaos unfolding around us.

  I leaned over, looking at Grace in the eye. “What’s the quickest way to the gym?” I asked.

  “Down this hall,” she said immediately. She’d been chewing on her hair, but took it out to answer my question. Aside from the hair-chewing, she seemed otherwise unfazed. “Then through the cafeteria.”

  I looked at Ethan. He nodded once and we set off down the hallway with Grace between us. Peterman dogged Ethan’s heels. He had a remarkable ability to both talk and run simultaneously, which I guess was the byproduct of many long years walking swiftly down a hospital corridor while engaged in conversation.

  “Is it wise for us to be in the building right now? I mean, this is clearly where they were coming. Perhaps we should follow the crowd in the opposite direction of here.”

  “They’re currently occupied dispatching everyone in a position of authority,” said Ethan, who wasn’t even winded. “They’re most likely after supplies, like food, water--and medicine. The tents were the least safe. They might come into the cafeteria to look for food afterward, but we’ll be long gone by then.”

  Outside, I heard something like an explosion, followed by screams. The hallway veered right toward the cafeteria and the sounds from outside grew muted as we pushed deeper into the school and away from the chaos outside.

  The cafeteria was dark and we hurried towards the door that led to the gym. A chair flew through a large window just ahead of us, shattering it. Ethan quickly pulled me and Grace beneath a table. Peterman followed.

  We huddled together, breath ragged from fear and exertion. I tried to control it, slowing my breathing and becoming as quiet as possible. Beside me, I could hear Ethan doing the same. Grace, as always, was quiet as a church mouse. Even Peterman had fallen silent with fear.

  The chair skidded across the floor and came to a halt against the far wall. It was followed in short order by a heavy footsteps. Boots crunched on the glass. I couldn’t count how many from our position under the table.

  “Check the kitchens,” ordered one. “Start raiding the classrooms, see if any of the rugrats left their lunches behind when they sent them home from school. We need food and water, first and foremost.”

  The footsteps receded, branching off in separate directions. Ethan tugged on my hand and pulled us toward the broken window. He jumped over the sill and I picked up Grace, slight and tiny for her age, and handed her to Ethan so she wouldn’t cut herself on the glass climbing out. He reached for my hand and helped me out.

  “Why are we going out?” I heard Peterman’s voice in the dark as he clambered out after us. “I thought we were going through the gym.”

  “It wasn’t safe inside anymore,” said Ethan, staying close to the brick wall as we made our way around the building.

  “And it’s safer out here?” Peterman sounded dubious. Like most highly-educated intellectuals, he was apparently less than inclined to take advice from an outside party. He was used to being the smartest person in the room, always right, and probably having second thoughts about following us. But it was clear to even a relative stranger that Ethan knew what he was doing, and he was obviously anyone’s best chance for staying alive.

  We reached the edge of the building, where the cafeteria was connected to the gym via a breezeway. One of the bandana men paced th
e breezeway, holding what looked like a submachine gun.

  “How will we get past him?” whispered Peterman. Ethan held his hand out to me. Wordlessly, I passed him the Governor. Ethan gestured for me to get on the ground with Grace.

  I huddled in a crouch at the base of the building, using my body to shield her. Peterman, ever the hero, hunkered down on the ground behind us.

  Ethan slipped away into the darkness. Within seconds, he disappeared from my eyeline. I heard a single shot ring out in the darkness, followed by a thud. There was no follow-up noise. Ethan returned to our spot, looking grim but determined.

  I’d hardly had time to feel afraid he might not come back, and now I barely had time to feel relieved that he was. He pulled me to my feet along with Grace and we ran for the gym. I tried not to think about what I had just heard.

  It was impossible not to. I couldn’t keep it out of my mind. He hadn’t hesitated. It hadn’t even been hard for him. I was overwhelmed with a peculiar combination of shock, fear, gratitude, and curiosity about who I had married.

  I knew that Ethan knew things other people didn’t. I knew this made us safe in a way that other people weren’t. But it wasn’t until that moment I realized how different his upbringing made him from me and everyone else we knew.

  On the rare occasions he mentioned his childhood, it was rueful, almost as an aside, as if it was a curious eccentricity and nothing more. He had a store of amusing anecdotes about the people he grew up with, a colorful cast of characters. I saw now that he invented a story for me: one I could understand, and would find entertaining and easy to comprehend instead of horrifying and frightening. I realized then that I knew nothing about what he’d experienced in his early life or what he learned to do.

  I thought all of this in maybe a minute, the time it took us to reach the back of the gym. The Jeep sat waiting patiently for us.

  “You have a vehicle?” Peterman gasped.

  I glanced around. It was quiet behind the gym, for now, but the ceaseless sound of gunshots still rang out from the other side of the building, accompanied by screams of misery and fear. A thick plume of black smoke billowed over the top of the building.

  This was a deciding moment: leaving someone in the chaos was inarguably inhumane; bringing a stranger into our fold and leading them to our safe haven was inevitably foolish. If it had been an ordinary person--edgy, hysterical, and in an irrelevant field, it wouldn’t have even been a question. Ethan would have gotten rid of them for our safety, one way or another. (I thought again of how he’d disposed of the gunman.) A calm and useful person in the field of security or medicine, on the other hand--that wasn’t something to be thrown out with the bathwater.

  I knew Ethan, who’d just risked his life to protect us and to pull a man in danger of being trampled to his feet, thought the same thing. We ran in a single file line towards the Jeep and I got in back with Grace, handing Ethan the keys as he got behind the wheel. We didn’t say anything as Peterman clambered into the passenger side.

  Ethan threw the Jeep into gear and peeled out of the parking lot. Instead of driving down the long curving drive that led to the front gate of the school, he drove up the steep hill behind the gym, weaving his way through trees and mowing down underbrush. We emerged on a narrow side street, conspicuously absent of sound.

  “Where are we going?” Peterman asked.

  “Out of the city, as far away as we can get,” said Ethan. “It’s only going to get worse.”

  Peterman fell silent at this. I stared out the window. The sound of gunshots receded behind us, but I felt no safer being back on the road.

  Ethan squinted down at the gas gauge and bit his lip.

  “We’re going to need to get gas,” he said quietly.

  In my lap, my hands clenched. The thought of stopping out here was terrifying. But it was unavoidable. The ranch was far enough outside the city that if we ran out of gas, we’d wind up in the middle of nowhere. Walking for hours. Exposed.

  Compared to the possibility of being exposed for only a few minutes while Ethan siphoned gas from a stopped vehicle, there was really no question of what had to be done.

  Ethan pulled to a stop behind a parked car. I reached behind me to the very back and pulled out an empty container of gas. Peterman watched us, glancing outside nervously.

  “We can’t use our cards to get gas from the pump,” he explained as he removed a length of clear plastic tubing from the glove compartment. “And I highly doubt there’s anyone inside the stations at this point, so…”

  “Of course,” said Peterman hastily. “It’s just that--is there anything I can do?” His eyes were riveted to his hands and I could see that it pained him to ask, though probably not as badly as it would have to sit there uselessly while we did all the work. But his hands were his life’s work, and I was certain fear of being maimed made him apprehensive to engage in combat.

  Ethan said that if there ever were an EMP, people would always assume in the back of their minds that eventually things would go back to the way they were before, and they’d have a chance to resume their normal lives. They were wrong, he added. But he didn’t tell Peterman that.

  “Stay here,” he told him, not unkindly. He reached into the glove compartment a second time, removing the gun he kept there. He pressed it into Peterman’s hands. “If anyone approaches you--shoot them.”

  I turned to Grace. I could just barely make out her large eyes in the darkness. “I want you to huddle on the floor in a ball, like a little mouse, okay? Don’t get up, whatever you do.”

  She crawled onto the floor behind the driver’s seat and curled up. I pulled an afghan from the back and covered her securely with it. I looked at Ethan.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  We opened our doors and stepped into the night.

  7

  I looked around at the dark street around us. There was a line of stalled cars in addition to the one we were behind. There was nobody in any of them. I didn’t see anyone in the street.

  We approached the nearby car and Ethan handed me the gun. “I need you to cover me while I do this,” he said. “But Charlie--if you see anyone, they’re probably not going to ask you for directions. Are you okay with doing this?”

  I knew what he was really asking me: was I okay with shooting someone, if I had to? The truth was, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t know unless it happened, and I guessed I would just have to be. The idea revolted me, but the notion of how easy it might turn out to be--if I felt threatened, like our lives were at stake--was somehow even more frightening.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m okay.” After all, what other choice did we have?

  Ethan hefted the crowbar he’d taken from the back and went around to the driver’s side window. He smashed the window in with a few sharp blows, then reached in carefully and popped the button releasing the door over the gas tank. I set the empty gas container on the ground, then reached in and unscrewed the cap.

  Ethan returned, pulling two tubes from his pocket and a rag. “Are you ready?” he asked me. I nodded. I stood behind him while he siphoned the gas, scanning our surroundings, gun at the ready.

  I knew that Ethan was being quick and efficient, but every second that ticked by made my hair stand on end. I felt electrified down to my pores, waiting for the other shoe to drop. When he stood, the container sloshing in one hand, all the air went out of my body in a whoosh.

  Halfway back, I heard a loud crack split the ear. Instinctively, I dropped to the ground, on my hands and knees. I crawled along the ground and pressed myself against the tire of the Jeep. I glanced behind me. Ethan was doing the same, having taken cover behind the parked car. I couldn’t tell what direction the bullets came from.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” a man’s voice called, and I heard the echo of several people laughing. We were still behind our respective shields, and the voice called out again. “Come on, just give us your stuff and w
e won’t make it hard,” he said cajolingly.

  I doubted that very much. I looked at Ethan, who was looking at me. The distance that separated us was short, but it might as well have been a mile. I tried to think what he would have done had our positions been reversed.

  I looked up at the building in front of me. It was a sporting goods store with a large glass display window, populated with golf clubs. In the glass’s reflection, I made out the outline of a man carrying a torch in one hand and a gun in the other. His expression in the light of the fire he held looked insane. I could just make out two others in the background. I couldn’t tell whether or not they were armed, but they were just feet away from the parked car Ethan was behind.

  I stood and aimed over the hood. I had just enough time to register that the other two men had no guns. Instead, they carried machetes. The man with the torch halted in the street, surprised, when he saw me. He raised his gun.

  In my mind, I saw the target at the firing range that Ethan took me to every weekend for six straight weeks, and every other weekend since. I imagined him as a paper outline. I squeezed the trigger and fired.

  He dropped to the ground. His companions froze, staring at his crumpled form on the ground. Then they reanimated and ran toward me with their weapons raised. Peterman threw open the door and fired at one of them just as Ethan reached my side. The second man dropped and the third skidded to a halt. He stared at us, guns trained on him. His machete clattered to the ground, and he raised his arms in the air.