by Sergio Gomez
But mostly he thought about his wife, and how much he missed her. Everyone he knew was dead, but of all the people in the world, he missed her the most.
*
He sees himself walking into the kitchen with that morning’s copy of the paper and a cup of fresh squeezed orange juice in his other hand. Charlie isn’t up yet, there’s still half an hour of snoozing for him until his wife wakes him up to eat and then takes him to school. The endless yapping and crying loosely rolled into the plot of a Spanish soap opera is just a murmur coming from the TV set as he walks through the living room.
When he comes into the kitchen his wife is facing the TV, she’s blowing into her mug of coffee to try to cool it. On the table behind her is a plate with a half-eaten Mexican pastry known as a concha. On the other end of the table, for him, is a plate of eggs and chorizo that still has steam slowly rising out of it. The spice of the sausage wafts into his nostrils. His wife turns to him with a big smile when she hears him come into the kitchen. He walks over to her, saying good morning in Spanish, and kisses her on the lips. It’s how it always was. How it was always supposed to be.’ Til death do us part, as the vows had said on their wedding day.
*
He felt tears building up in his eyes. He thought about raising his arm to wipe at them, but the arm never got there because he was fast asleep a second later.
*
“Pa, Pa, get up.” Charlie nudged his shoulder.
Alejandro lifted up, vaguely feeling hungover. He wiped the drool from his face, which left a muddy streak from his arm.
“What time is it?” Alejandro asked reflexively, knowing that Charlie wouldn’t know the answer.
Charlie shrugged.
Alejandro walked to the side of the road to get a better look at where the sun was. It was still halfway above the horizon, which meant it was after 6 o’clock. They still had some time before dark, but not much. He swore under his breath, he intended to only sleep for fifteen minutes and ended up sleeping for nearly two hours.
He walked back to the rock (the thought of taking another nap—they were set back already, anyway—came across his mind) and started putting on his backpack. “Come on, we have to go.”
Charlie quickly gathered his belongings and threw his backpack on. “Dad are you mad at me?”
“No, why would I be?”
“For not waking you up, I guess.”
Alejandro almost spat, “If I should be mad it should be at myself. It’s my job to keep us safe—to keep you safe.”
“I let you sleep cause you seemed so…I don’t know. Peaceful.”
Alejandro didn’t reply, and they started down the road again.
“Dad, you were dreaming, right?”
“Yeah,” Alejandro replied.
“About Mommy?”
Alejandro turned to face Charlie, for a second entertaining the idea that he had read his dreams somehow. “Yes…why?”
“You said her name.”
Alejandro grabbed his son’s hand and squeezed. “Yeah, Charlie, I was dreaming of when things were normal.”
Charlie dropped his eyes down to the road, feeling like he said the wrong thing.
“We have to find a place to hide for the night.” Alejandro told him, as if he had asked.
They walked in silence except for the sound of their worn shoes beating on the road. All the trees they passed began to look identical. Whether it was fatigue or they actually were going around in a circle they weren’t exactly sure, but both thought it, and both were hesitant to tell the other so as to not cause panic.
A few minutes later there was a break in the trees that announced their progression and killed the thoughts of going in circles.
Down the side of the road there was a gleam that made them both stop. In the middle of the gulley they were looking at was a wreckage of colors like a bulldozer had run over a rainbow, then backed up and smashed it all to smaller pieces.
The more Alejandro looked at it, the more the picture of what it was became clear to him. It was a small carnival, with only one big tent that now lay flattened out in the middle of a pile of a multitude of colors. The poles that once gave it shape jutted out like bones through tears in the cloth. Around it laid smaller tents and wooden booths that had suffered a similar fate. Following the spaces between the patches of rubble you could still see the paths that were once walked by visitors between strips of cotton candy booths, hotdog carts, rigged carnival games, and miniature roller coasters. Now, however, none of that was present, only a sea of colorful destruction lay underneath the trees.
“It’s…it’s a carnival.” Charlie said. “Or was.”
Alejandro looked up to see the time of the day. The sun had just the top of its head poking up past the horizon so that the final rays of daylight just touched the ground, giving all of the colors of the carnival a golden radiance. He would not have been more mesmerized had they found a floating kaleidoscope in the middle of the road.
“It’s like the one we went to last year with Mom.” Charlie said, and the memory of that made him grin.
“Yeah.” Alejandro responded, but his mind was elsewhere; besides games and rollercoasters carnivals also had food. If they could find some hotdogs lying around in the wreckage, that would buy them more time until they found other survivors. By the looks of how badly raided the carnival was, it was wishful thinking, but wishful thinking was all he had right now and he hoped it’d be enough.
He drew his gun out of its holster, once again glad that his friend Julio had talked him into getting one, “in case shit goes down, carnal,” as he had said that afternoon.
They had been going to a Home Depot to pick up some supply to fix the roof at his house, and outside of the store was a group of Mexicans getting loud and rowdy with each other. Julio had stopped his truck a few parking spaces away from the commotion, rolled down his window, and lit up a cigarette. He took a drag from it and looked at Alejandro, “See man, that’s why we gotta get strapped. In case shit goes down, carnal.” So they had gone a week later and both gotten pistols on his advice.
Alejandro swept away the thoughts of his friend and brought himself back to the task.
“Quedate atrás de mi,” Alejandro said to Charlie.
He was speaking Spanish to him, which was their rule; if there were any signs of other humans in the area they would speak Spanish exclusively until Alejandro said the safe word.
He walked down the slope of the gulley. As instructed, Charlie followed close behind him. They made their way toward the carnival grounds, stepping over a chain-link fence that had once surrounded it but now was knocked over. It was bent out of shape and contorted on the ground like a victim of a car crash.
They followed the paths between the wrecked carnival attractions. Wood and plastic and loads of trash crunched under their feet, but not one sign of any other activity. Or any food. Alejandro’s stomach grumbled at the thought.
They walked past a tipped over cage decorated with balloon drawings and a clown face sign that was still hanging on by one ambitious nail. The front bars of the cage had been ripped open like a giant hamster had chewed through the steel. Blood was splattered all over the inside of the cage, on the ceiling, on the seat where the taunting clown once waited for kids to knock him down, and in the empty pool where he waited to be knocked down into.
This was the doing of the monsters of the night, the ones him and Charlie called Los Noches, a grammatically incorrect nickname that derived from the sentence Los de las noches.
The blood told the story of what happened at the scene. A human must have been trying to get away from Los Noches, and jumped into the cage in hopes of protection. Los Noches knocked the cage over and ripped it open, then killed the human by ripping him or her with their claws. Or with their teeth. Or with their sheer strength. Alejandro shuddered at the thought of how many weapons those monsters had.
The path ended up ahead, they could go straight or to the left or right. Alejandro looked o
ver his shoulder and nodded his head to the right. “Para ya.”
They turned the corner past a booth that was still standing only because it was bolted to the ground. Its walls were destroyed like a grenade had gone off inside of it.
Alejandro stopped when he saw what was up ahead on the path. Lying on his back was a human who was stripped down to his genitals. The big white gut was almost shiny underneath the last shimmers of the sun. There was a lack of rise and fall from the gut that brought a sense of danger with it. A ring of panic went through Alejandro’s head.
“Mijo, escondete aya.” He nudged his head toward the booth next to them—or what remained of it, anyway. “Me llamas si te pasa algo, okay?”
Charlie looked up at him, eyes big. “Aya?”
“Si! Apurate.” He said sternly.
Charlie darted across the path and ran into the booth. Alejandro waited until his son was ducked down by one of the pieces standing tall enough to be considered a wall. Then he continued down the path.
He was certain that the person was dead, but just for precaution’s sake he held the gun pointed at the fat man. When he got close enough to the body to see over the belly, he felt his stomach flip like a fish out of water. The left side of the man’s face was shiny red from the blood dripping out of the wound.
Alejandro felt the tickle of vomit crawl up his throat like a tarantula, tried to fight it, but the sensation won. He turned to the side and threw up. The first load came out brown from the beans. His stomach pushed in a second time and the little bit of water left in his stomach came out mixed in with some bile. He fell to his knees and dry wretched three times so hard he began to see stars crawling in his vision.
When it stopped he fell back on his ass, feeling weak. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and blinked the wetness away from his eyes. He had dropped the gun at some point when he was vomiting his guts out, so he picked that up and put it back in its holster and got up off the ground.
Charlie’s head was poking out from the side of the wall and he called out to his dad. “Estás bien?”
“Si, quedate adonde estás.” He called back. Charlie’s head ducked back under.
Alejandro took in a deep breath and spun around to look at the dead body again. Even though the right eye, the good eye, was looking straight up at the sky, Alejandro felt like the man was looking right at him, pleading him for help from beyond the grave.
This was the closest he had ever been to a dead body other than his wife’s, but his wife had died of natural causes. Not died in a bloody mess, this was different somehow, like they could have helped the man had they come through here earlier.
As much as he didn’t want to, he crouched down to get a closer look at the wound. There would be more like this along the way, of that he was sure. Maybe worse stuff, too. Getting close to the man made the details of the wound more obvious, it was a bullet wound that the blood was pouring out from. He could see where the bullet hole had gone through the front of his forehead, right between the eye and the nose so that the nose was dangling down by the mouth. His stomach flipped again, but this time he fought it off.
He took his backpack off. From the front pocket he fished out a handkerchief. He laid the handkerchief over the man’s face. It was dirty and covered in grease, but a dead man can’t complain. Besides, that was the only one he was willing to lose.
Using his two fingers, he blessed himself and began to recite the only prayer he knew. He wasn’t much of a holy man, he had barely gone to church except for on and around Easter and Christmas, but this seemed almost as involuntary as the throwing up.
When he was done, he got up and put the backpack on. He walked back to the booth where Charlie was hiding. Charlie heard him coming and popped his head out again, the look on his face asking the question if everything was alright.
“Ya, todo bien.” Alejandro said and wrapped his arms around Charlie.
Charlie leaned his head on his hip. “Was he dead?”
“Yes, mijo, he was dead.”
“Was it Los Noches who did it?”
Alejandro swallowed. He knew it wasn’t, he knew enough about those creatures to know that they didn’t use human weapons like guns. They were too primitive and relied on their physical attributes to cause their damage. This was the work of humans.
Humans had killed that man and had stripped him of everything he had. Standing there in the middle of the colorful mess, under the orange and purple struggle of night and day fighting for dominance of the sky, Alejandro couldn’t find the heart to tell his son the horrors humans were capable of, especially when their backs were pressed against the wall.
But he wouldn’t have to. He’d find out. Soon enough, his son would find out.
2
They came across a run-down town that was as still as a painting, the only sounds were of the wind moving trash around the streets; a glass bottle rolling from one side of the street to the other, stray pages of the local newspaper scattering through the air like autumn leaves, bags of chips dragging across the pavement here and there. There was an abundance of litter covering the streets, enough to tell about the culture of what the town was into if you had the time to pick it all up and examine it.
But all you needed to look at was the smashed out windows of the houses and the overgrown yards to know you were in a ghost town. The residents were long gone, dead or seeking refuge somewhere far from here. Their homes and cars had been left behind for the weeds to claim them. With the way things were going, in about a year the entire town would be hidden.
Up above the town the sky was turning purple as the last inches of sunlight retreated.
“Over there, come on, vamonos!” Alejandro grabbed his son’s wrist and pulled him down the street toward the tallest building in the little town.
When they got to the front of the building they saw it was a pizza shop as indicated by the sign that flapped over the top of the building like a flag. Alejandro tried the front door, but it didn’t budge. He slammed his shoulder into it, but the door still wouldn’t give. Something was stuck on the other side.
“We could try the window.” Charlie suggested, pointing to the large window next to the door.
There was a Coca-Cola machine halfway sticking out of the window which saved them the trouble of smashing through it.
“Good idea.”
They descended the front stairs and went around to the window. There were still shards of glass stuck to the frame, so Alejandro used his boot to clear the shards off.
“Take your bag off.”
Charlie took the bag off and Alejandro took it and threw it through the window.
“Okay, now you.” Alejandro said.
Charlie hopped up and grabbed the window frame and with a little boost from Alejandro he climbed through the window to the other side.
“Watch your head.” Alejandro said, and chucked his own bag into the building. Then he hopped up and crawled through the window.
Charlie already had his lantern turned on—instincts he had learned from the world they now lived in. The only other source of light inside the shop was the little bit glimmering in from the broken window behind them.
Alejandro scanned the room. He found that the door wasn’t locked, but was actually being blocked by an overturned table. The pizza shop was in as much of shambles as the town outside was. There were three other tables, all of which were overturned and one of which was smashed to bits. The light also revealed dust particles floating all through the room, and cobwebs in each corner. It had been a while since anyone had kept this place up to FDA standards.
On the opposite side of the room, but coming from outside, they heard metal being scratched followed by grunts and growls. They were animalistic, no doubt, but too indistinguishable.
Charlie looked up at him, eyes big, and opened his mouth to say something. Alejandro silenced him by putting a finger up to his mouth. He took the same finger and pointed to behind the counter, where a cashier, maybe
a high school kid who was only working for the summer, once rang up the shop’s customers.
Charlie ran to the counter, mindful of where he was stepping so as to not make a noise to alert whatever was outside. He made it behind the counter without stepping on any of the trash on the ground that would make too much noise.
Once he was hidden behind the counter Alejandro made his way through the pizza shop toward the window closest to the sound. He weaved through the mess on the ground as quietly as he could, stepping over a pizza box that had a roach come scurrying out of and darting through a crack between one of the walls and the floor. The window was surprisingly intact; it even had blinds that were drawn down. Alejandro drew his pistol and using the barrel lifted up the blind to peek outside.
The window faced the back of another building so that between them was a back alley flooded with the fluorescent light of a lamp in the middle of the street. It was the first sign of electricity that Alejandro had seen in months and he almost gasped at the sight of it, like he was seeing some sort of lost magic from a lost world.
The scratching and growls were coming from a bear rummaging through the dumpster behind the pizza shop. Alejandro watched as the bear pulled out two pieces of bread from the dumpster and kicked himself for not thinking of looking in there. He let the blind close.
He put the gun back in its holster. He turned to Charlie, whose head was poking out from the side of the counter. Alejandro gave him a thumbs-up and said, “It’s okay. Just a bear.”
“Better than Los Noches.” Charlie said, hopping out from behind the counter.
Alejandro joined him near the counter and they stood in front of a wooden door that looked about ready to come off its hinges. “They should be waking up soon.”
“I guess we’re staying here for the night?” Charlie asked.
Alejandro grabbed the knob and popped open the rickety door to reveal a steep staircase covered in dust.
“Mijo, get the lantern out of my bag.” He commanded.
