by Jeff Strand
“I don’t think you’ve entirely recovered yet,” Missy noted.
“I don’t think I have, either. I’m going up the ladder for some alone time.”
* * *
By the time Missy prepared dinner (beans) she believed Kevin when he assured her that he was fine. They’d been locked down here for four months, so he was entitled to one instance of unnerving insanity. After all, she’d woken up once to find herself chewing on his ear, which she let Kevin believe was meant to be foreplay but which most certainly was not.
But they had to get out of here soon, or one of them was going to snap for real.
* * *
“Why do we wear clothes?” Kevin asked, the next day.
“Excuse me?”
Kevin gestured to his shirt and pants. “Why do we wear these?”
“Evolution?”
“I don’t mean humankind in general. I mean, us. It’s a pain to wash them, and we haven’t had anybody drop in for an unexpected visit since we moved down here. I’ve seen you naked, you’ve seen me naked, and there aren’t any windows, so why do we bother?”
“Because that’s what civilized people do.”
“But why be civilized? That’s so pre-apocalypse.”
“I’d like to retain that, thank you very much.”
“It’s not like Uncle Jake’s clothes are flattering on you.”
“So if we’re going to take that step, why even talk? Why not just communicate with gestures and grunts?”
“You’re being silly.”
“What happens when we finally do get out of here? It would really blow to get our freedom back just to go to prison for indecent exposure.”
“Still being silly. I’d dress to go out.”
“Sorry, but I’m not ready to start hurling feces yet.”
“Who the hell said anything about hurling feces? That’s your chain of events, not mine!”
“Whatever. I’m not going feral.”
“Fine. If you want to cling to the old ways, be my guest, but I’m turning this place into a nudist shelter.” Kevin unbuttoned his fly.
“You can do whatever you want,” said Missy. “But don’t expect me to put my mouth on a penis that I’m tired of looking at.”
Kevin re-buttoned his fly. “I guess that’s a pretty good deterrent for naturalism.”
“These breakdowns need to stop, Kevin.”
“That one wasn’t an official breakdown.”
“I’m counting it.”
“It wasn’t! I proposed an idea, you disagreed with it, we discussed it, you made it sound unappealing, and I withdrew it. There’s nothing wrong with that!”
“Seriously, Kevin. You need to keep it together.”
“Or what? You’ll pull a gun on me?”
“Kevin!”
“Okay, yeah, I’ll admit that the gun comment I just made sort of crossed the line into a breakdown. I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I don’t actually believe that you’d shoot me.”
“This is going to stop, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
* * *
“There’s something squirmy in my eye,” said Kevin.
“Like what?”
“Like…I don’t know, what kind of things are squirmy? Eels? It doesn’t really feel like an eel. Not a worm, either. It’s not so much slimy, just squirmy. Like…like…like…a centipede! That’s it. A centipede.”
“You think you have a centipede in your eye?”
Kevin glared at Missy. “No, Melissa, I do not believe that I have a centipede in my eyeball. Stop treating me like I’m losing my grip on reality. All I said was that it feels like I have a centipede in my eye.”
“So what do you think is actually wrong?”
“I don’t know. If I knew, I would have said the cause, not the symptom.”
“Let me take a look. Hold your eye open.”
Missy looked into Kevin’s eye. It was a little bloodshot, and the pupil was slightly dilated, but there was no visible evidence of a centipede or centipede-like creature squirming around in there.
“It looks okay,” Missy said.
“Of course you’d say that.”
“Because it’s true.”
“If it’s true, how come I can see it pulsating? Hmmm? Answer me that. Explain the pulsating.”
“How can you see your own eye pulsating?”
“I can see it reflected in your eye. Right next to your soul.”
“Kevin—”
“I’m sorry! That was way creepier than it sounded in my head. I think you may have to lock me away somewhere.”
“There’s nowhere to lock you!”
“Please don’t put me in the bag with Uncle Jake!”
“I’d never do that. I may have to tie you up, though.”
“Please don’t tie me up with Uncle Jake!”
“For God’s sake, Kevin, what’s the matter with you?”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s somehow related to the centipede in my eyeball!”
“We already ruled that out.”
“Oh, but I bet you’d just looooove to take out my eyeball and check for yourself, wouldn’t you? Maybe pop it into your mouth when I’m not looking with my other eye? You’ve lost it, Missy. Get help.”
“Kevin, please don’t make me take drastic measures. I need you!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Kevin’s voice cracked. “I think it’s the ghost of Uncle Jake worming his way into my brain!”
“It’s probably not.”
“It could be!”
“Nope.”
“He was never the same after Aunt Susan died!”
“Who?”
“Aunt Susan.”
“Who the hell is Aunt Susan?”
“She died.”
Missy wanted to smack the shit out of Kevin, but it wasn’t a good idea to smack the shit out of somebody who was already demonstrating unstable behavior. “Why is this the first time you’re mentioning her?”
Kevin looked extremely confused by the question. And then he frowned. “I’m not sure I ever knew that there was an Aunt Susan.”
“What?”
“She died before I was born. I don’t think anybody ever mentioned her.”
“Well, somebody had to have mentioned her.”
Kevin shook his head. “I’m pretty sure nobody did. Oh, jeez, that’s freaky as hell.”
“Of course they did. Maybe you were just a kid and you don’t remember. What day did she die?”
“I have no idea!”
“Think!”
Kevin scrunched his eyes closed and was silent for a full minute. “Easter?”
“She died on Easter?”
“Something happened on Easter. Maybe just a memorable egg hunt. But Easter is in my head right now.”
“What year? How soon before you were born did your Aunt Susan die?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think!”
“Three years? Four? Uncle Jake was a lot older than my mom, so it could’ve been ten, eleven…”
“Okay, so we can’t back into the exact date. But we’ve got a range.”
This scenario required that a) Aunt Susan was an actual person and not a figment of Kevin’s madness, b) Easter was indeed relevant, and c) that Uncle Jake had set his passcode based on that. It really wasn’t any better than their current plan of just counting their way up from 0-0-0-0 to 9-9-9-9. But she had to desperately claw at something, so why not desperately claw at this?
* * *
They sat silently, eating disgusting vile wretched hellish slop out of a can.
Kevin couldn’t help but feel embarrassed by his recent behavior. It freaked him out that he’d heard “Aunt Susan” so clearly in his mind, and that he was so sure she’d died on Easter Sunday. He’d heard it in his own voice, not Uncle Jake’s, but he was genuinely convinced that Uncle Jake was speaking to him.
He elected not to share this with Missy.
Tha
t is, he quit sharing it with her after quickly discovering that she was not receptive to the idea.
He supposed it was possible that this was some sort of memory that had been buried in the back of his mind, but it didn’t feel like anything that he’d simply forgotten. In fact, it felt like he could strengthen the connection by opening the body bag.
He wouldn’t do that, though. Missy wouldn’t like it. In such close quarters, it was advisable to avoid making her think his mind had degenerated to the point where he might try to wear her skin.
That night, he offered to sleep on the floor, since the chances of any sexual activity were pretty remote anyway. He hoped that Missy would say, “No, no, that’s okay,” but she agreed that it was an excellent idea.
* * *
Missy was always the one to enter the combinations each morning, but Kevin woke up before her and decided that it was his turn. If his hunch was correct, she would awaken to a wonderful surprise. If his hunch was wrong, he didn’t think her anger with him would increase by more than ten or fifteen percent.
He climbed the ladder. How early could Easter start? He wasn’t completely sure, so he decided to play it safe and start with April.
0-4-0-1.
INCORRECT.
0-4-0-2.
Something whirred, then something clicked, then something beeped.
Whoa.
Kevin turned the handle and pushed open the lid. Then he scurried down the ladder. “Missy! Missy! Missy! Missy!”
“What?” she asked, sitting up in bed.
“I did it! I did it! I did it!”
“What?”
“The lid! The lid! It’s open! The lid! I figured out the combination!”
“Are you serious?” Missy got out of bed and hurried over to the ladder. She looked up and let out a squeal of delight.
“It was 0-4-0-2! Easter was right! At least, Easter was right if April 2nd was the date of Easter the year my Aunt Susan died! We’ll check a calendar when we get out of here! And, yeah, you would have gotten to 0-4-0-2 in a few days anyway, so my vision wasn’t a huge help, but we’re free! We’re frickin’ free!”
Almost giggling with giddy excitement, Missy and Kevin hurried up the ladder and out of the shelter.
CHAPTER SIX
Uncle Jake’s home didn’t look as bad as Missy would have expected. It still existed, for one thing. It could use a good dusting and vacuuming, and maybe two or three fewer possum carcasses on the sofa, but overall it was in fine shape.
“It’s not a wasteland,” said Kevin, nodding his approval. “That’s good.”
They opened the front door and stepped outside. It was a sunny day and the sky was beautiful, with no sign of the green smoke. A few trees had fallen, but that seemed to be the extent of the devastation.
Missy and Kevin just stood there, breathing in fresh air. She hadn’t realized how badly the shelter had reeked until now. She probably reeked, too, and felt kind of bad for bringing her unpleasant scent into this glorious environment.
“Paradise,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to go get our phones, just in case,” said Kevin. Missy’s battery had only lasted for a month of daily checks for a signal, but Kevin’s still had a bit of juice left.
“Thanks,” said Missy. She could barely believe it. If her parents were alive, she might get to talk to them today!
Maybe the world was fine. The population was smaller, of course, but that didn’t mean there’d been devastating changes to the infrastructure. Tonight she might log on to Facebook and see angry comments bitching about the fact that people were still posting about the green smoke.
Or maybe things were even better than they had been. Maybe the citizens of the world said “Wow, looks like we’d better step up our game, humanity!”
That was the kind of thing she’d want to slap Kevin for saying. Things were most definitely not better. But she’d be elated if she could just talk to her mom and dad, find out for sure that they’d lived through this.
Kevin went back inside Uncle Jake’s house. Missy took a long, deep breath. It would have been longer and deeper, but she stopped inhaling when she heard Kevin cry out.
When Missy rushed inside, he was being strangled.
The strangler was human, presumably, but only in the sense that it had arms, legs, a torso, a head, and facial features in approximately the same places one might expect to see them on a human. Its skin had a light green tint. It was covered with boils of various sizes, and there was some definite oozing action going on. It wore a blue baseball cap and a filthy but still identifiable Tampa Bay Rays T-shirt.
Kevin pulled away from it with a yelp, its fingers leaving a green smear on his neck. The creature stumbled toward him and opened its mouth wide. It only had four or five teeth, but the relatively small quantity of them did not make the teeth less frightening.
The creature lunged at Kevin, tackling him and knocking both of them to the ground. A big cloud of dust rose into the air upon impact.
“Please provide me with some greatly needed assistance in removing this unsightly individual from upon me,” said Kevin, though it sounded more like “Auuuaaagh!!!”
Missy grabbed the back of the creature’s shirt and pulled. The cloth tore away easily, leaving the creature still trying to kill Kevin. She grabbed its arm, but her hands slipped off just as one might expect when one was grabbing oozing boils, and she lost her balance and nearly fell backwards.
“Refrain from such ineffective techniques that do not solve the problem and attempt a more productive solution!” said Kevin, though it sounded more like he was saying “Auuuaaagh!!!” again.
Missy wrapped her arm around the creature’s neck, headlock style. It made noises as if gargling phlegm-covered razor blades as she pulled it off Kevin. She lost her balance again and wasn’t able to stay upright, landing on her ass but not releasing the creature.
Kevin sat up and punched the creature in the face. A large piece of what may have been its lip flew off and stuck to the sofa cushion.
He punched it again. Another piece of lip flew off and hit the cushion, though this one did not stick.
Missy squeezed her arm more tightly around its neck. Breaking somebody’s neck in a headlock was not a skill set she’d ever acquired, or one that she’d ever expected to use, but she didn’t think there would be a diplomatic resolution to this conflict.
The creature twisted itself around so that suddenly it was on top of Missy, and her ability to snap its neck like an action movie hero became somewhat compromised. Its hat fell off. The mostly lipless creature continued to make that hideous gargling sound, and one of its teeth dropped out and bounced against Missy’s chin.
Kevin grabbed a large handful of its long, scraggly hair, which ripped off, taking a couple of square inches of scalp with it. Kevin tossed that away and instead wrapped his arms around its torso, pulling it off Missy. He violently threw the creature aside, although the level of violence was lessened when it struck the soft fluffy cushions of the couch.
“What the hell is that thing?” Kevin screamed.
“I don’t know what the hell that thing is!” Missy screamed.
“What the hell is it doing here?” Kevin screamed.
“How the hell should I know?” Missy screamed.
The creature got to its feet and turned to face them. Its eyes were yellow and leaky, and didn’t seem to actually focus on Kevin as it took a step toward him. Kevin shoved the creature back onto the couch.
We need the gun, Missy thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to run over to the ladder. What if they got trapped down there again? Even though they knew the combination, the idea of climbing back down into the shelter right now was unbearable. So she grabbed a lamp off the coffee table and bashed it into the creature’s head.
Its head didn’t cave in, exactly, but in the battle of lamp versus skull, skull lost. Though the creature kept making that gurgling sound, it went up about an octa
ve. Its left eye bulged from the socket; not popped out all the way, but close. Missy reflected upon the fact that eyeballs were a lot bigger than most people thought, because they rarely saw the whole thing. Then she stopped reflecting on that and bashed the other side of the creature’s head, shattering the base of the lamp.
The creature flopped back down onto the sofa.
Then it reached for them and sat up.
This was more than a little surprising, since it had two very large dents in its head. In fact, the first dent was…well, not leaking, more like foaming. Its left eye was bugged out even more, though it had yet to reach the point of dangling.
Kevin kicked the creature in the chest. There was a pop sound and a burst of green as if Kevin had kicked an ooze-filled water balloon.
The creature once again flopped back onto the sofa. It looked at them, and for a split second it had a recognizably human facial expression, one that seemed to say What the fuck, dude? Then it glanced down at its chest, and seemed almost heartbroken.
“Go get the gun,” said Kevin. “I’ll keep hitting it with stuff.”
Missy nodded and quickly ran back to the ladder. Getting accidentally locked down in the shelter again was no longer a concern; clearly they needed a better weapon.
For a split second she couldn’t recall where they’d put Uncle Jake’s gun. Then she remembered: it was in the drawer next to the silverware. She opened the drawer, grabbed the gun, and then she grabbed a couple of knives from the silverware drawer just in case.
“Eeek!” Kevin shouted from above. It may not have been exactly “Eeek!” but it sure sounded like it. She ran back to the ladder, put the knives between her teeth, and started to climb.
“Watch out!” she heard Kevin shout.
A foot came into view above her head, and then the creature fell down the shaft. Missy had time to spit out the knives, sparing herself the experience of having her face sliced in half, but she wasn’t able to jump off the ladder before the falling creature struck her.
She hit the floor and the breath whooshed out of her lungs. There was a sudden moment of panic—had she broken her back? Why couldn’t she move?
The creature had landed harder than her. Its eyeball remained stubbornly within the socket, but its nose had been virtually flattened. It was still feisty, though, and grabbed Missy’s ankle.
