by Russ Melrose
I grabbed the backpack and followed her. The stairway to the basement was on the east side of the living room. There was no door, just a stairway going down. She had left the door at the bottom of the stairs partially open.
The basement was remarkably dark. It had been blacked out and they'd done a good job of it. I couldn't tell what they had used to cover the windows, but no light entered the basement from outside. There was, however, a long sliver of light coming from a door that was cracked open. The line of light came out and widened as it slanted over the contours of a couch. As soon as we'd entered the basement, Sarah had grabbed a flashlight off a table next to the door.
She closed the door and I followed her and the swath of light from the flashlight to the partially opened door. On the way, we passed the couch with the strip of light angled across it and a coffee table in front of the couch. I couldn't see anything else; it was too dark. She had kept the flashlight beam dialed in on the carpeted floor. At the door, she turned to me. "I told them you were coming," she said softly.
Them? Her comment stopped me in my tracks, confused me. Who was she talking about? She had never mentioned anyone other than herself and Becky.
Sarah opened the door and waited for me to go in first. I hesitated for a moment, then walked in. She followed me in and softly closed the door. She turned the flashlight off and set it on top of a dresser next to the door. Then she grabbed a sunrise yellow bath towel off the same dresser and fit it snugly into the open crack at the bottom of the door. I assumed the towel was meant to keep any light from escaping into the family room. The towel would keep their hideaway room a secret in the dark. Then she locked the door. It was a simple push button knob lock.
Turns out them referred to her daughter and a man. Both were sitting on mattresses on opposite sides of the room. The man's mattress was on the left side of the room. He was probably in his early thirties. He sat yoga style on a twin mattress with his back perfectly straight and his long legs crossed at improbable angles. And even though he was sitting, I could tell he was quite tall, well over six feet. He had a reed thin build and had thick, black hair which was wavy in the front, then slicked back all the way back to the nape of his neck. I was surprised his hair wasn't disheveled from sleeping. He had dark eyes which were warm and friendly. He had smooth skin, the soft brown color of cocoa beans, and he had a brilliant smile which he beamed at me as he nodded his head in greeting. I thought he might be Indian or Pakistani.
Becky sat slouched with her back against the wall, head lazily canted, eyeing me curiously. An iPad lay on her lap. Becky's hair was whisker short like her mother, only bay colored. A patch of sparse freckles stretched across the bridge of her nose and settled in just below a pair of misty, pale green eyes. Mostly, Becky looked tired or bored or both. Maybe it was from the hunger or maybe it was from having to get up in the middle of the night.
Sarah turned around as she came abreast of them. She looked to her daughter and began the introductions. "This is Jake, sweetheart," she said. Then she turned to me. "Jake, this is my daughter, Becky."
Becky and I exchanged half-hearted smiles. I suddenly realized I was far too tired to feel awkward or ill at ease. Too tired to care. And for that I was thankful. I felt every bit as exhausted and tired as young Becky looked.
"Jake, this is our friend, Raj," she said. Then, "Raj, this is Jake."
Raj stood up briskly and walked over and shook my hand with great enthusiasm. He covered my hand with both of his as he shook it. He nodded his head several times in greeting. "Thank you so much for coming," he said, smiling brightly. "Thank you."
I nodded back. "It's okay," I told him.
Raj released my hand and nodded again before heading back to his mattress. He was far too cheerful, especially considering it was the middle of the night. And I suspected he was the kind of person you couldn't help but like yet found annoying too.
I knew I should have been upset about him being there, but I was too overwhelmed and numbed by pure exhaustion to care, at least at the moment. I knew I'd been duped. Sarah likely knew I wouldn't have come if I'd known Raj was here. And she was likely right. But I was here now and it would have been pointless to get upset about it.
Now that the introductions were over, all I could think about was the couch in the family room and how nice it would be to curl up and go to sleep. I couldn't wait to get out there. But I knew I would have to ask first.
I followed Sarah to the far end of the room where there were two large shelving units. She'd grabbed a pillow from Becky's mattress on the way. The shelving unit to the left had clothes neatly draped over the shelves as if they were laid out to dry. The shelving unit to the right had folded clothes and towels stacked on the shelves along with kitchenware and a collection of odds and ends, including two rolled up yoga mats. There was also a collection of containers that held water. Everything was extremely well organized.
It was easy to see why they had chosen to hole up in this room. For one thing, the room was windowless, and it also had the lock on the door. The door swung outward which would make it more difficult for the infected to break into the room. And then there was the dresser right next to the door. It would be easy to slide over and serve as a blockade, not that it would do any good. If they ever got past the door, the dresser wouldn't keep them out. But maybe it made them feel safer. The biggest problem I could see was a lack of any kind of escape exit. They would be trapped in the room. I didn't see any weapons around either.
The room itself was nothing short of austere. The walls were a lifeless beige and they were perfectly blank. No molding or pictures or any other kind of adornment. The floor was cement and there were no closets in the room either. There was a single light fixture in the middle of the ceiling. A two-bulb fixture. And that was it. A bland rectangular room, probably a storage room.
Sarah used the pillow as a buffer between her knees and the gray cement floor. She was on her knees, sitting on the back of her heels, her back straight. She had an elegant posture that seemed to come to her naturally. She turned on an electric hot plate sitting on the floor next to the shelving. She grabbed a pan from a shelf and put it on the burner. Then she turned toward me and reached her hand out for the food. It wasn't a demanding gesture. It was more like reaching for something at the dinner table that would prompt a family member to hand you whatever it was you needed. There was nothing that needed to be said.
I handed her the food from the backpack and she thanked me with a simple nod.
This was the first time I'd actually seen her clearly in the light. And I couldn't get over how remarkably white her skin was. A sharp contrast to her black hair and dark eyes. Sarah had hooded eyes that made her eyes look narrow and sleepy. But maybe she was just tired. Her eyes were moist and shiny, and her irises were dark enough that you could barely distinguish them from her black pupils. She had long sapling arms, slender and supple.
She put the food onto the shelves except for two cans of chicken noodle soup that she dumped into the pot. She took the carton of almond milk and filled three glasses. Then she motioned for Raj and Becky to come get theirs.
"Would you like some milk, Jake?" she asked me.
I declined. Mostly I was absorbed in a daydream about the couch in the other room.
Becky frowned at her glass of almond milk as if she'd found a bug crawling in it. Her mother grabbed the jar of peanut butter and a spoon and handed them to her daughter. "Don't overdo it," she warned.
Becky's eyes grew wide. She headed back to her queen-sized mattress with her new found treasure. Becky and her mother were obviously sharing the larger mattress. It was one of the first things I noticed when I entered the room.
Raj slowly sipped his almond milk, savoring each sip as if it were a glass of fine wine.
I decided now was as good a time as any to ask about my sleeping accommodations. Sarah was stirring the soup with a wooden ladle. She stopped for a moment and took a sip from her glass of almond milk.
I waited for her to respond.
She turned and studied me with painfully serious eyes. A small curvy line, like a child's drawing of a single ocean wave, appeared in the center of her forehead, a worry line. She looked puzzled. She must not have thought about what they'd have to do with me after I'd brought them food. Maybe she thought I'd just leave. But I knew that wasn't it. They would need me to bring them more food or to find them a house that was well stocked.
She opened her mouth to say something but held back. She thought about whatever it was she was thinking about for a few more seconds, then said, "Um. Sure. Okay. You better take the flashlight. You'll need it." She put her glass down and stood up and took a blanket off the top shelf and handed it to me. "The pillows on the couch are soft. They should do just fine. I think you'll be comfortable."
"Thanks," I said. I stood there for a moment waiting for something else, though I wasn't sure what it was.
The wavy worry line was still firmly etched into her forehead. Raj, still sipping his milk, nodded and smiled as I finally turned to leave. Becky was focused on a spoonful of peanut butter and ignored my exit.
I removed the towel from the floor and set it back on top of the dresser and then I grabbed the flashlight. After I closed the door, I turned the flashlight on. To my left was a hallway. Straight ahead at the end of the hallway was a bathroom with its door open. I assumed there would be a bedroom or two on either side of the bathroom. But I wasn't going to explore them tonight. Sweeping the flashlight beam to my right, I could see the couch and coffee table. Across from them was a large entertainment center. There were a few other pieces of furniture scattered around the room.
I went upstairs and repacked my things in case I needed to leave in a hurry. If the infected came, I'd rip off a window covering and exit out one of the windows that led to the backyard. I'd try to talk them into coming with me if I could. But I knew they would stay in the storage room no matter what. They'd slide the dresser in front of the door and hope for the best. It would be suicide, but they didn't know that. If the infected ever discovered they were in the storage room, they'd never give up trying to get in.
Back downstairs, I laid the flashlight on the coffee table with its beam focused on the couch. I set the backpack down on the floor. I'd left the blanket on the coffee table earlier. I didn't really think I'd need it.
I found the couch pillows every bit as soft as Sarah said they would be. I was lying on my back. The leather couch was comfy but not overly soft. After a few moments, I turned the flashlight off. The only light in the room came from the crack at the bottom of the storage room door. After a few minutes, that light went out too, probably from the towel being stuffed into the crack. Then the room was pitch black, as dark as I could ever remember a room being. The darkness was incredibly deep. It was as if the darkness went on forever and there was nothing else. I blinked my eyes a couple times but the darkness remained. Darkness was all there was and I was deeply immersed in it. Drifting. Alone, yet peaceful.
And there was an essence or quality to the darkness that was hard to define, a kind of purity. There was nothing to see because there was nothing there. I sensed nothing, felt nothing. The world as I had known it had disappeared and I found that comforting. I was strangely drawn to the idea of nothingness, the ultimate sanctuary, devoid of pain and suffering—though I knew it wouldn't last and I knew it wasn't real. I had needed a reprieve even if it were only for a few minutes, and the darkness gave me that. It ended abruptly when I heard the soft click of the knob lock being pushed in.
Locking the door was simply their routine, and it made perfect sense. They'd be safer and sleep sounder with the door locked. Still, I felt shut out, echoes of my childhood. But it didn't have anything to do with locking the door. Locking the door was symbolic more than anything. It was the look Sarah had given me after I'd asked her if I could settle down on the couch. Faces rarely tell lies and Sarah's face couldn't hide the truth. She didn't trust me, and it was clear she didn't feel comfortable having me stay in her home. I thought I'd earned a little cachet by bringing them food, but that didn't appear to be the case.
For a moment, I thought about leaving by the back door and going back to the house where I'd found the food. I could spend the night there and leave in the morning and make it to the underpass before noon. But I couldn't leave them even if I didn't feel welcome in their home. I'd set something in motion by coming here, and I was locked into the outcome. If I didn't finish what I'd started, I'd regret it, and I didn't have room for any more regrets. I had no choice but to tough it out, no matter how they felt about me. I would find them enough food to last them a month, maybe longer, or I'd find an abandoned home with lots of food storage. Once I did that, I'd be done with them.
I was thoroughly spent. I rolled onto my side and let my body ease into the soft leather cushions, then buried my face in the pillow. I was beyond exhausted, but my mind wouldn't leave me alone. Too many unresolved issues. I felt the need to descend into the inner darkness of sleep, but my mind would have none of it. An image of the old woman with her blackened leathery face danced before my mind's eye. And I couldn't help but examine the twisted irony of my ever-conflicted inner self. I hadn't wanted to shoot the old woman, yet when I did, I felt little remorse.
I ruminated about it as more images flashed before me—the teen boy I shot in the head, the infected man in the striped business suit I'd hit with the car, the Swimmer lurking in the shadows—a collage of the infected I'd encountered and maimed in some way.
I couldn't stop thinking about the old woman and the teen I'd shot and couldn't understand why I felt no remorse or guilt. I hadn't wanted to shoot the old woman because I saw her, to some degree, as still being human. No question, her being female added to my hesitation. My hesitation in shooting her was perfectly understandable, even logical. But feeling no remorse after the fact didn't sit right with me. I kept telling myself I should have felt some remorse because that's what human beings do. But I didn't feel a thing. I just felt numb.
I knew I'd shot them because I didn't want to be infected or eaten. I wanted to survive. And then it dawned on me that I'd been undergoing a subtle shift in my mind. The idea that they weren't human had finally taken a foothold. I'd been slow to come around to the notion because of Alex. I'd even gone as far as to ascribe human characteristics to them. And I'd had an almost desperate need to see them as still being human, but they weren't. I'd been conflicted about the infected, but I never should have been. If I wanted to survive, and I did, I had to stop thinking of them as human and start seeing them for what they were. They were the infected and they were dangerous.
I shot them because I wanted to live. It was as simple as that. And I acknowledged to myself that I hadn't done anything wrong. There was no need for remorse. I'd acted in self-defense. I did what I had to do.
My mind drifted to Alex. I missed my brother's happy-go-lucky demeanor and his laughter. Alex had a way of dissolving my overly serious nature. In my mind I pictured my brother fly fishing at the stream by the cabin. I saw his smiling face with the deep dimples cut into his cheeks. Alex never seemed to be bothered by much of anything while I worried incessantly about everything. Alex always had a way of calming me down. And that's what I needed more than anything now. My mind grew heavier as the moments passed, but I kept his image alive for as long as I could. And then slowly but inexorably, Alex and I merged into the soothing darkness.
Chapter 10 – Conversations
When my eyes fluttered open, I felt disoriented. It was the light. The light and the blanket. I couldn't remember putting the blanket on myself during the night and that confused me. And I'd expected the room to be as pitch black as when I'd gone to sleep, but it wasn't. I turned over onto my back to see what was up. The room's overhead light fixture was on along with a standing la
mp next to the couch. Becky Josephson was sitting on the edge of the coffee table watching me.
"Are you awake?" she asked, whispering softly in a conspiratorial voice. She looked at me brightly, much more alert than she'd been last night. Food will do that for you. Food and sleep.
"I guess so," I told her.
"You really slept a long time," she said. "Did you know it's after eleven o'clock?"
"No," I told her. "I didn't know." I was still trying to get my bearings. The air conditioner droned monotonously. I squinted as my eyes began to adjust to the light. She took notice.
"We turn the lights on during the day. My mom says it's okay to have them on during the day. And it's okay to talk quietly as long as the air conditioning is on." Then she added, "And even if it goes off, we can whisper in the storage room as long as the door's closed." And she whispered when she said it.
Becky wore khaki shorts and a white blouse with long sleeves. I guessed her to be around the same age as my fifth graders. Her short-cropped hair would have made her look like a young cancer patient if it hadn't been for her rosy complexion and lively energy. She leaned forward and glanced momentarily toward the open door to the storage room, apparently to make sure we were alone. Then she looked at me, eyes wide with intrigue.
"Are you a burglar?" she asked, spacing her words, her quiet voice filled with restrained excitement. She scratched her left arm near her shoulder and looked at me expectantly.
"No," I said softly. "I'm afraid not. I teach fifth graders at Beacon Heights Elementary."
She looked surprised, even disappointed. "But you broke into our home," she told me, as if that must have made it true.
"Yes, I did. That's true. But that's not what I do for a living. I had to get into your house so I could get you and your mom some food."
"Oh," she said, looking a bit crestfallen.
After a few moments, as if she suddenly remembered, she said, "Oh, yeah. Thank you for the food."
