by Geo Dell
“You too... Scared a little,“ he said.
She kissed him back and pulled him down to her.
~
Roberta Teals made her way down the candle lit tunnel. She had never really been afraid of the dark, she had a lantern to help, and there were candles mounted at intervals on the walls that someone had put up. Still, it was a little spooky, and maybe she was about to make a fool out of herself too. Maybe she had misunderstood entirely. Maybe it had only been a joke.
She stopped. Had it been a joke? She thought about it. No. It may have been something else, but it had not been a joke. She started to move again. Anyway, she told herself, she'd be there in a just a few minutes and then she'd know for sure.
Stop worrying, Bobby, she told herself. But it did no good. Her heart was like a jackhammer, trip-tripping in her chest. Her mouth was dry. In the old days this would never have happened. She had never once let herself slip back then, never once. She had looked, but she had never touched. She had never given anyone any kind of reason to talk about her morals. She was a good christian girl. A woman who loved God.
What she felt and what the church dictated were not the same things at all. They did not fit together, and the church didn't bend. This was not some religion that forgave its priests for their sexual assaults on children, this was a church that threw you to the dogs if you even looked askance at anything sinful at all. Hadn't they thrown the pastors own sister under the bus because she had dated a man who was not yet divorced? They had, and even the pastor could not save her. He had not even raised a finger. They had driven her out. She had killed herself a few months later. Respected church woman. Woman of God one day, then a slut the next. No in between and no redemption. Their God was a hard God, the Bible was right about that. And they had not, to her knowledge, done more than kissed goodnight after a date. A single date. There was no sex involved. No improper touching, nothing like that at all.
Bobby herself had never had sex. She had thought about it, but sex was right out of the picture completely. No marriage, no sex. So she was a nineteen year old virgin. A nineteen year old lesbian virgin, she told herself.
All that strict religious upbringing. All the prayers that seemed to go unanswered. All the attractions in the world. All the boys she had dated, pawing her because that was what she was supposed to allow. Somehow that was different from the other stuff. She still didn't have that figured out. Some sort of double standard, she guessed.
All the times she had wished for a woman of her own. College and roommate after roommate who would walk around semi nude, or completely nude as if it didn't matter to anyone. And now this.
Now she was maybe going to find out what love was all about... Or at least sex.
She had wondered about her back a hundred years ago, or so it seemed like a hundred years since she had decided to follow the others into the mountains. She had met her then. And hadn't there been something right then? Hadn't there been something in the way she had brushed off all the guys advances? Wasn't there?
Maybe, she told herself. And Bonnie was beautiful. She could have had any of those men at all. Any one she chose. Craige had been interested and had made no bones about it. But she had shut him down. Not harsh, just an easy no. She liked him, but it was still no. And then she had looked at Bobby and the look had said, Well? Hadn't it?
But she was so goddamned afraid to change. So afraid to say what she really felt. Speak what was really on her mind. Afraid her parents would turn over in their graves if they knew. Afraid that God would cast thunderbolts from his heaven. Afraid of being afraid, she told herself now.
She reached the entrance and hesitated. She took a deep breath, stepped around the wall and into the chamber past a hanging tarp that someone had closed off the entrance with.
Bonnie was in the water holding onto the rocky ledge. She looked sad, lost in thought, but her face brightened as Bobby stepped into the room and broke into her thoughts with a soft hello.
“I thought you changed your mind, “ Bonnie told her with a smile.
“Just scared... A little. I thought maybe it was a joke,” Bobby told her as she reached the pools edge and looked down into her eyes.
Bonnie pushed her hands down onto the ledge and lifted herself out of the water. She stood on the stone floor, water running across her naked body and dripping to the floor. She twisted the water out her honey blonde hair, as Bobby tried hard to look like she wasn't just looking at her nudity. She walked over to Bobby, took the towel and the clothes out of her hands and set them with her own things.
“I've been trying to tell you for weeks, Bobby. It's not a joke. I wouldn't do that to you,” she said.
Bobby let her breath out slowly. Trying to slow her heartbeat. She took a deep breath. Leaned forward and kissed Bonnie's lips. Her hands lit upon her breasts and then quickly flew away as if startled. A second later as the kiss deepened they came back and stayed, tracing circles around Bonnie's nipples.
Bonnie's hands found the buttons on Bobby's shirt and began to work at them.
~
Sandy's Journal.
It's late. I spent the night, early evening, going over herbal remedies. Old folklore, time tested stuff. It's surprising how much we've come to depend on chemicals to do the job that we already have remedies from nature for.
The book gave me a headache, Susan took that away. I love her so much. I really do.
Things are going good here. We're going to have lights soon. They talked about it at the meeting tonight. Steve Choi is amazing, and he knows his stuff too. A real doctor, and he is teaching us. We also have hot water. Real hot water and it is practically free. Mother nature made, spirit given. It seems like such a small thing but it is a big deal to us.
We also have more space. Al because we finally got around to exploring the rest of this cave that we were led to. Amy, Lilly, Cindy, Craig and Bonnie spent most of the day exploring and they discovered the hot pool and two new caves with openings to the outside. One opens to the opposite side of this mountain in fact. Candace was there with them too, I suppose. We all had hot baths tonight. It was great. Unbelievable in fact.
Tomorrow we'll start arranging our space. Bob will sort out the volunteers with the farm work, and Tom, Ronnie and that crew will start with building houses. Setting up the saw mill, building homes. I can tell you, I have never been this happy in my life.
~
“I'm tired, baby. It's been a long, long day,” Candace said as she and Mike walked through the darkness of the valley toward home. The meeting in the barn had not lasted all that long, but writing it all down had been a bear. Amy had been right about that. It would be great once Tim got some to the computers up and working so they could just record it and turn it into text. Lilly had pointed out that it would be easier, but that all the stuff they were writing now would have to be written all over again as it was typed in. Amy had promised to talk to Tim and get him to hurry so there wouldn't be a mountain of stuff waiting to be typed in.
“It has been a long day,” Mike agreed.
“Good. Then you agree it is time to put your woman to bed,” Candace told him. She giggled. “Just be glad I'm not making you carry me the last bit,” she said as the house came into view.
“Oh, is that so,” Mike asked as he stopped. He bent, and picked her up in his arms before she could say another word.
“If you make one crack about it being a heavy load or something...”
“Wouldn't think of it, honey. Wouldn't think of it,” he told her as they mounted the steps and he toed the door open.
She giggled as they made their way inside.
Donita
New York
The fires smoldered but no longer burned.
Donita walked down Eighth Avenue towards Columbus Circle. Behind her a silent army followed, numbering in the thousands. From the circle they would take the park.
There were thousands of the living camped out in the park. She could smell them on the air tha
t flowed past her face as she walked. They had believed they were safe in their numbers. They had believed that nothing could touch them with their barricades. And for a time that had been true, but that time was passed now.
She had begun her walk with only a few thousand, but that number had grown as she had traveled across the land to this place. The small towns, and the dead cities along the way, added their contributions from those that had gathered in those places. Many waiting for her. There were dozens of cities they controlled now. Dotted along the route she had walked. Some she had called and set in a place of power with the ability to call more of their own to them. Some had been there waiting for her. All had known who she was, and all had bowed to her power.
In the crowds there were other leaders. She knew them, they traveled with their own. To the south there would be another, to the west yet one more, across the oceans others she could sense and almost feel with the senses that death bought to her. She understood those concepts: Other places, other leaders, but not the places or the dead themselves. The places meant no more to her than this place, or the name she used to know so well as her own. Meaningless. The dead only followed, as she herself followed. What mattered to the dead were things that could not be conceived of by the breathers, and as time passed they grew further apart. It became harder to see that there had once been a connection of any kind.
From Northeast Philadelphia to what had been Woodbridge Township the land was an open sore. The cities largely leveled, the roads gone. Trees, shrubs and grasses working quickly to wipe the scar of the breathers from the land. She and those that followed had continued through these desolate areas and began to find more of their own in Elisabeth, and then in Newark. They had crossed to Jersey City and from there she had led them through the Holland Tunnel, still powered and intact after everything and into Manhattan. They had walked up Eighth Avenue as if they owned it. The living were there. There and watching, well protected in their hiding places, but they offered no fight. Did not try to stop them. There remained only Columbus circle and then they would take Central Park.
There were thousands here, and they believed in their safety, but then the diseases had begun to kill them off. And the bodies began to pile up faster than they could remove them. From there it had gone down hill fast. They had begun to banish those who were sick, but that failed too because there were too many that were sick, and the dead were turning faster. There was no way to get them all, and so they began to hide from the others.
That had been the beginning of the end, they had begun to fall apart from the inside out, and they were ready to be taken now. There would be losses, but they would be nothing at all compared to the gains, and Donita was willing to suffer them.
She reached the circle and the army behind her came to a halt. Silent in the gloom of early evening. Looking from side to side, other leaders stood in front of their own, waiting. An occasional scrape of a foot across the cracked pavement, the soft rustle of moldering clothing the only sounds from the vast crowd. Donita stood and stared off into the park entrance across the other side of the circle.
A scatter of wrecked and long burned out vehicles partially blocked the entrance. A line of buses blocked the roads and pathways into the park. Sheet steel was welded over the windows. Holes burned through with Acetylene torches every few feet as gun ports. A long line of concrete barricades crossed in front of the buses about a hundred yards out, wrapped around the park entrances, and shot away up Central Park West and West 59th on the other side. The barriers extended out into the streets as far as she could see, but she saw no one patrolling or watching from the trees. Nothing. No rifle tips poked from the gun ports cut into the sheet steel either. Even so, she could smell them and their fear. They had seen this army from a long way off coming down Eighth Avenue. They knew what it meant for them, and many, she could tell, had accepted it. Suicide seemed to be their answer. Done right, even she could not bring them back. And some had opted for that out. Even now as she stood and listened, she heard the occasional gunshot. Some far off, some closer by.
But others only hastened the change. A shot that killed but did not destroy. In a matter of hours, or even minutes, they would come back. In a few days they would begin the process of change and they would find their way to the dead.
The ones behind her knew not to kill for the sake of killing. Not to destroy those they needed. There were plenty that were not needed. Those could be killed and consumed. Thousands upon thousands of the weak, the elderly, the ones she did not wish to make a part of her army. Those she left to them to do as they wished. But they knew the penalty for taking one that was hers: Death. Permanent death. And after a taste of forever, thinking once again about death was inconceivable. That would keep the majority of them in line. The few that did step out she would take care of personally.
She watched as the barrel of a rifle slipped through a ragged hole in the sheet steel. She looked around at her silent army once more and then thrust her head back, face staring up at the moon, and screamed into the darkening night: As a mass they all ran at the line of buses.
Donita hit the bus and quickly scrambled up the side, climbing over the shoulders of others. The gunshots were hard and steady, and dozens fell as the shooters found their mark. She reached the top along with hundreds of others and the roads into the park lay open before them. Lightly guarded, there were few left who could guard. The metal of the bus roof that surrounded her began to dimple as she paused, as if some unseen magic was causing the holes to suddenly appear. Donita launched herself through the air, came down, and ran straight at a man who stood firing over the tops of the buses. Spraying those that reached the top with bullets.
He saw her far too late, tried to turn, but she reached him and hit him hard, driving him to the ground. She straddled him, jerked him upward by the vest he wore and bit deeply into his throat. Her mouth widened as she fastened her teeth on his throat, across his throat, and then bit deeply. His arteries went in a spray of red and she tossed him lifeless back to the ground and made her feet once more.
Two of her fingers flew away as a bullet hit her raised hand, she screamed and tackled the shooter to the ground, ripping his head completely from his body as he was still falling. She was up quickly and running into the darkness of the park, the others close behind her. The shooting all but behind them now.
The park fires were low and smokey, most had gone out. The sick far outnumbered the well now, and the sickness continued to take them. Most lay dead, rising, or waiting to die. The few who could still fight went down fast.
They entered the Sheep Meadow and the dying covered the ground. Some had come back already. Slow, ragged, on the cusp of change. Donita slowed and those that had stayed with her walked their way through the dead and dying along with her.
Around her, screams rent the air as her soldiers took those that fought, and gave them the gift they were reluctant to take. Their own waste had killed them. The lake water had become fouled and poisoned, yet they had continued to drink from it: Even when it had begun to kill them they had not stopped.
The reservoir had been worse. Hiding its contamination better, and more had succumbed from that. In the end the sickness had fed upon itself just as the dead who rose had fed on the living and the sick. Within an hour the park belonged to Donita. The occasional scream rent the air, but they were becoming less. The dead and dying were scattered across the entire park now. The entrances and exits were wide open, the dead could come and go as they pleased. The breathers too, if they were foolish enough.
She continued on her way alone, her army spread out within the park, feeding, waiting on her call.
The north end of the park was her destination and she walked the abandoned pathways and roads, finally finding East Drive and making her way along the darkened blacktop.
In the distance there was a glow over the tops of the trees and buildings. She could pick out individual streetlights farther away. Harlem. And Harlem would be a harder nut t
o crack.
The breathers in Harlem had closed it off entirely. Abandoned cars blocked the streets. There were shooters everywhere. The dead or dying were dealt with immediately. There was no mercy, no second guessing, dead was dead and dead bought more dead with it. They understood it on their own terms. They could not see it as it truly was. A gift. She had hoped she could get them to see it, but she was sure they would not see it until death introduced it to them. She could smell that fact. It came to her on the wind that blew across the tree tops and dropped down to the cracked pavement where she walked: The stench of the living.
She reached the shadows at the edge of the trees and peered out at the split where Lenox Avenue veered away. Quiet, deserted, but not far away she could hear the noise that accompanied the breathers. The smell of fire and smoke hung on the air, igniting a fear within her that he could not suppress. She took the sweeping right hand road and walked quietly along in the shadows to the park entrance. She left the road and entered the treeline, following it towards West 110th Street. She stopped within the trees and looked out at Lenox Avenue where it crossed 110th and headed into Harlem.
On the park side there were buses that closed off the entrance and marched away into the darkness. The buses were empty.
On the other side of West 110th a nearly identical line of buses marched away. The space in between was littered with corpses, burned out cars, skeletal remains still resting in the rusted hulks. Beyond the second row of buses the street lights marched away into Harlem. She could smell the river, whether the Hudson or The East she did not know. The lights and the noise of the breathers drew her attention back to the buses. She scaled a nearby tree and looked over the tops of the buses into the projects and the city beyond.
The streets inside the closed off area were clear for as far as she could see. Some places had been devastated, buildings down, but gangs of people worked there still, clearing the damaged buildings, or what was left. Small trucks patrolled the streets. Machine gun toting men in the back, riding in the open air. Everything she had hoped to see was not there. There was no disorganization of any kind at all. Whoever was in charge in Harlem had the electricity on and the peace kept. No rioting. No bodies littered the streets: If there had been abandoned vehicles they had been cleared. People strolled the streets under the lights, looking as though the world had never changed at all, or had maybe even changed for the better.
