by J. D. Palmer
“Hey. I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to be mad, there were these dogs and… ” She shrugs and gives me a little smile before heading into the house. I push the cart, limbs still feeling flimsy, chastising myself not for being so weak but for showing it so readily.
Chapter 12
The cart is filled with food and water. And two guns. I begin to ask her where she got them and then I remember the cops in the CVS. I don’t want to know. Shit, shouldn’t be too hard to find guns now.
I take the pistol and examine it. It’s a Glock, polished steel and a worn grip. I pull the clip and see that there are only three bullets left. Beryl points to three spare magazines. She watches me as I hold the gun, eyes following my movements. She releases her clip revealing that it is empty. She is tentative, casting worried glances at me as she puts a new one in. I show her how to hold it. I try to get her shoulders to relax, first with talk but then with my hands. The minute I touch her she shrugs me off and returns to unloading the cart. Some things she is not ready for.
Dinner that evening is a simple affair: canned peaches and cold canned chili and half an apple each. We eat outside. I don’t think either of us enjoy spending a lot of time indoors anymore. And it’s nice to sit in a chair and feel a breeze, the feeling of the fading sun brushing over bone white skin.
I broach a question that has been gnawing at me, even though she answered it before. “You are from here, right? Do you want to go, you know, check on any family?”
She froze the minute I started talking, spoon halfway to her lips. She slowly shakes her head, her eyes never leaving the ground. “Are you sure?” She nods very deliberately, her lips pursing in…anger? I don’t probe any further. I begin to eat again. Beryl doesn’t move, her heavy lidded gaze still down on the ground.
“Beryl.” She doesn’t move.
“Beryl.” She looks up, her brow creased. I know what she is thinking about, I don’t know what her answer will be though.
“I’m going to try to go home. Montana. It’s not going to be easy. I don’t know what’s up there or what’s on the way.” I arch an eyebrow. “There’s snow.”
She snorts out of her nose and shakes her head.
“I don’t know if you have anything here, Beryl.” She gets a wary look in her eyes. “But you’re more than welcome to come with me if you want.”
She snorts and gestures for the pad.
I have nothing here. I go where you go.
Then some more scribbling and a second piece of paper.
Idiot.
I laugh. “Are you sure?”
She stares at me, seemingly taken aback. Slowly she nods, perplexed.
Oh god, she thinks that I don’t want her along.
“It would be… Beryl I really want you to come.”
There’s relief in her eyes that I assume is a mirror of my own. She gives me a nod and clasps her hands together. It makes me smile. I would understand if she hadn’t wanted to come with me. Hell, I had wondered if she didn’t want to erase all traces of her time with Stuart, including me.
“That’s good. I’m not too good at surviving on my own.”
She gives me a rare big smile and resumes eating.
I sleep again, fitfully. The toxins in my body still torment my brain, my dreams snatches of fear and regret. I always wake up scared.
And starving.
There isn’t enough food in the world for me as I recuperate. I totter after Beryl as we tour the neighborhood with a shopping cart, raiding small marts and homes for whatever fodder they might yield. Barely communicating, two wild animals prowling around in search of a meal. Cans and boxes are everywhere. Loaded with salt and preservatives and god knows what. But it is edible. We wolf it all down as our bodies cry out for fresh vegetables.
It’s slow going for me. An orange tree at the end of the block marks the beginning of every day. It’s a long walk and I’m usually drained by the time we get there. But it’s worth it for the fresh fruit. The only thing new and verdant in this asphalt wasteland. It’s a small reassurance that somehow life will go on.
I sit beneath the tree with Beryl and we see who can unwrap an orange and keep the peel intact. That tree serves as my measuring stick. How far can I go? How tired am I? And every day I put on a little weight. The bruises and cuts fading slowly into scar tissue. Even the haunted look that stares back at me in passing car windows and mirrors starts to become something more manageable.
Beryl makes strides as well. She is eating more. Still not enough, but enough to even out some of the hollowness in her cheeks. Sometimes she vanishes, disappearing into her head at the sight of a doll, or a dress, or something that I can’t see. But these instances are diminishing.
I don’t try to talk to her about it and she doesn’t mention that my nightmares keep her awake at night. We weather the storm together.
She does write notes to me every time I say something stupid, though.
I stop taking the antibiotics. I want the haziness to clear from my head. I hope, knowing that I’m most likely wrong, that the medicine is the cause of my nightmares. I am impatient to return to some semblance of normality so that we can start the trip home.
Today we keep walking past the orange tree down the street in search of a map. I’m feeling better except for occasional bouts of lightheadedness. With all the beatings and chains and electrocutions I can’t pinpoint which blow to the head messed me up the most. But I must have had a concussion, only now am I starting to slip free of the murkiness that lays like a film over my mind. I catch myself now when I forget what I was doing or saying. It’s scary, wondering what I forgot. Or what I imagined. And I can’t exactly ask Beryl to fill in the gaps.
It doesn’t matter. Every day is a day in which we are free.
I want to go home.
I know I’m too weak to start the trek back. It should be planned out, anyways. But I don’t know how to start. It seems like an impossible task at the moment. Not just because of my health. Getting out of the city concerns me. It lays in front of us, a vast labyrinth that dominates the land as far as the eye can see.
Beryl and I walk slowly down Manchester Avenue. I prattle on about Montana, about the water, the mountains, the farmland. I hope I’m not repeating myself. I don’t think she listens, anyways. She grips her gun tightly as we walk and her eyes are always scanning. I shut up. I’m already falling back into the recklessness that got me caught up with Stuart in the first place.
We check a thrift store and find an old atlas. I spread it out onto the floor and debate our options with Beryl. I ask her if she wants to try to take a boat up the coast and she shakes her head vehemently. I laugh and tell her it’s okay. “I’m terrified of sharks.”
Beeeee-ooooop. Weeooo weeooo. We freeze as a car alarm goes off outside. Beryl is pale and shaking, she swings her gun towards the door. I pull my gun as well though I don’t point it at anything. Adrenaline courses through me. It’s Stuart. It has to be. Oh god he’s here. He is standing outside with the shock collars in his hand and he’s impatient to get home. He’s taking us back there oh god no I won’t go back.
Pull yourself together.
I look around. It’s a small building, I don’t know if there is more than one entrance. We sit in silence as the car whoops and whines outside. It eventually dies out and still we sit. What could cause a car alarm to go off? What could do that other than a human?
“Get up. Let’s get out of here.” Beryl follows me towards the door. I peek outside. Nothing. “Probably a cat jumped on a car.” My voice is thin and reedy and I need to stop saying stupid things. We step outside into the light. Neither of us know what to do, we keep looking at each other. What if it’s another person? What do they want? Stuart is too fresh in our minds.
“Let’s go.” We edge around the building and get back to the street. “Watch ahead of us, okay, I’ll watch behind.” She is moving slow. Hunched over, head darting back and forth. My palm is slick on the handle of the gun. I glance
behind. A head darts behind the wall of a building.
“Hold it!” I scream without thinking, training the gun on the spot where I saw the person. Beryl turns and aims her gun with me. The silence stretches.
“I saw someone, Beryl, I swear.”
I don’t know how she takes this but her gun doesn’t waver from the corner.
“We got guns, too!” A voice, high and nervous.
He said we.
“What do you want?” I know Beryl is shaking her head. Who cares what they want? No one can be trusted.
“We just wanted to meet you. We don’t mean any harm.” Then another voice, more panicky, “Yo we are the last damn people alive!”
I don’t know how to respond. I don’t think I can trust anyone else. I also don’t trust them not to follow us. “You want to meet, come on out. Slow.” I try to put authority behind my voice, speak like I know what I’m doing. “You guys do anything stupid, I’ll shoot you. I swear it.” God dammit that sounded like a scared little kid.
“Okay.” Slowly a head and shoulders peek around the corner. A man steps out, followed by another. Two men. Both of the same height. They walk closer, the first one holds his hands up in front of him with a scared smile on his face. The other walks behind, mouth pursed and eyes wide, hands held out to his sides. Both are Asian. The first has a short haircut and patchy facial hair that I imagine is the longest it has ever been in his whole life. He is thicker than his companion, the soft features of someone who rarely engages in anything athletic. Kind eyes in a trusting face. He wears a nice button up shirt now stained by the new life we all lead.
The other has long hair on top, previously shaved sides starting to grow out from the style that was fashionable before this happened. The tips are slightly purple. Sleeves of tattoos run from his neck and down his arms and under a black tank top. Delicate features but for the dark eyes filled with distrust.
They stop twenty feet away. The one in the lead speaks first. “Hello, my name is John. This is my brother, Steven.”
“You said something about having guns.” I have to be harsh. I have to disarm these men, I have to take away the threat.
“That was my brother, he… We don’t have any guns.” The brother scowls. I see the resemblance now, though the two couldn’t be more different than oil and water.
“Take your shirt off. Show me. Show me you have no guns.”
Steven huffs. He looks at his brother and they exchange a stream of Japanese. I don’t like it. “Hey! Keep it to English.”
The man named John nods. “My apologies. I understand how that can make you nervous. My brother… doesn’t like what you are making us do.”
“I don’t care. Do it anyways.”
John stares at me, the goodwill in his demeanor fading in the face of my cruelty. “Fine.” He gives a curt shrug and puts an arm out to his brother. “Okay, we will show you that we are friends. Because we are.” He unbuttons his shirt with nervous fingers, peeling it back and lifting up a soiled undershirt. Steven lifts his shirt and they both spin.
“Drop your pants.” John hesitates and I slide a bullet into the chamber. My heart is racing. What scares me most is how serious I am. I will not risk going back to that hell. And Stuart had seemed nice when I met him.
“You fucking kidding me?” Steven glares at me, eyes darting between me and Beryl and the guns aimed at him.
“Do it.”
He hisses a string of words to his brother and for a second I don’t think they are going to obey. Then they comply, unzipping and pulling down their pants as I feel both relieved and disgusted by what I’m doing.
The brothers stand in the middle of a six lane street, jeans around their ankles, glaring at me. There are no guns. I glance at Beryl, she doesn’t look back at me, focused entirely on the men.
“Okay. Hello.”
The two men dress at these words. I lower my gun. Beryl doesn’t. John finishes buckling his belt and meets my gaze. He puts his hands out wide. “Now would be the part where you share your names, or do you want to keep shaming us?”
“You don’t know shame.” I say it without thinking, suddenly angry. They fall silent. Still. I am breathing heavily, a storm of anger circling in my chest. I’m the danger right now. I am the threat. I take deep breaths as I work to calm myself.
“My name is Harlan. This is Beryl.”
John nods. “A pleasure to meet you both. I understand this… has not been easy.”
I do not know what he means by this. I nod anyways.
“Yo.” I look at Steven. He gestures broadly at Beryl. “Can you ask her to stop aiming her motherfucking gun at me?”
Before Steven is finished talking my gun is aimed at him as well. He falls silent. The storm swirls, clouds of anger swollen and black inside me. I’m close to snapping. It’s as if I’m not fully in charge of myself anymore. My mind matching the fear and anger in his words and deciding to double down. I know I am being unreasonable but reasonable fucked me over the last time. I know that they don’t know our story but I don’t care.
John holds up placating hands. “Please, please, put the gun away. We will leave, we will just walk away, okay?”
They back away. One step. Two steps. They turn around.
I despair.
I needed them to prove that they were harmless so that they could stay.
So they could stay? Did I want that?
The weight of the empty world crashes down onto the intersection. I hear the scrape of their shoes and muttered Japanese and the sounds already distant, the incubating quiet giving birth to a different kind of despondency.
I’m fearful of my own fear.
I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life trusting no one. But do I want to risk ending up in chains again? Realization slowly filters into my consciousness. One day we will have to trust again.
Would we?
We would have to, or else what was the point?
“Wait.”
The brothers are almost back to the building. They freeze, I can tell they think I have stopped them for vile reasons. They turn. John pushes his hands out in front of him. “We don’t have anything worth taking.”
“Just… Just wait.” I look at Beryl. “We have to try.”
She shakes her head, eyes darting to the men. Her gun is still raised.
“Beryl. Put the gun down.” She doesn’t respond. “Please.”
She looks me in the eyes. No words could give me more of a rebuke than the look she gives me. But she lowers the gun. If this goes to hell this is on me. Maybe it will. But everything goes back to Stuart, how he took us and warped us and broke us. If we stop taking chances on people then he will have won. Or worse, someday we will turn into him, two twisted souls, minds corrupted in order to make sense of a world we are too scared to face.
Fuck that man. I’d rather be wrong than let him win.
John and Steven stand there, perplexed. John turns to Beryl. “You can trust us.” Beryl shakes her head, a permanent frown on her face.
“We will do our best,” I say. “Let’s go eat, get to know each other.” One step. Two steps. Three. I lead the way and the brothers fall in behind me. Beryl brings up the rear as I lead the group back to our place and I pray that I don’t hear a gunshot.
Chapter 13
The couple who lived upstairs in the apartment building had a small gas grill on their balcony with some spare propane canisters. I haul it downstairs. My neck throbs and I am sweating profusely. Probably a mistake. I hope the brothers don’t see how weak I am.
Damned if I was going to ask for help though.
I know that I’m not hauling it in an effort to be hospitable. I’m doing it to because I want them to know my strength. Or my imagined strength. I am aware of the stupidity of what I’m doing but unable to stop myself.
I light it and heat some canned soup. The guys sit on the grass since there aren’t any more chairs and they are nervous to encroach on our space. Beryl’s space, to be
exact. She sits, gun in her lap, and stares at both of them in turn. Waiting for them to make a move.
She has taken to carrying around the small pad of paper and a pen. She gives me notes, her penmanship getting stronger as her hands start to remember how to write.
She put the paper on the table when we got back. Her way of giving me the silent treatment. All of us, I guess. There won’t be any overtures of friendship, no communication at all, not from her side.
“You don’t talk a lot, do you?” Steven is playing with grass and trying to be casual.
“She doesn’t speak,” I say.
“Doesn’t speak or can’t speak?”
“I don’t think that matters.” I am having a hard time not snapping at Steven’s bluntness. John sees this and is quick to try to draw attention away from his brother.
“So how did you guys meet?”
Not a good path to go down. Beryl looks at me. I know she doesn’t want our story to be told. Neither do I. “We met by the beach a couple weeks ago.” John nods, allowing me to kill the story.
“I was at work when people started dying. I worked at a law firm. I thought we had pissed off someone. You hear stories, outlandish I know, but you hear about lunatics losing cases and coming after firms. Anthrax is what I thought it was. The way people were getting sick so quickly. That feels so selfish, saying it.” He pauses, reliving the day. “I helped quarantine the building. Sent a text to my brother and my parents letting them know what happened. My assistant called 911. Then she got sick. And I’m running around trying to help people wondering why it’s taking so long for the ambulances. I wondered if they weren’t letting anyone in. I pictured firemen and police cars surrounding the building, men in hazmat suits setting up a quarantine. I thought it was all about me, at first. Then I went outside.”
I look at Beryl, she’s listening to him. I don’t see the walls coming down with her anytime soon.
But I see her wanting the walls to come down.
John sits back, looking around the group. I know he didn’t share the story because he wanted to, but because he is trying to cultivate trust within the group. He is the only one trying. I respect him a lot for that. Steven sits quiet, playing with blades of grass. He abruptly rips them up and wipes his fingers off on his pants. “Yo, anyone mind if I smoke?”
