Apocalyptic Shorts

by Victor Darksaber

  “Um um,” he shakes his head.

  I open the glove compartment, there's a revolver in it. I take it and check if it’s loaded, it is. I put it back.

  “You should hold on to that,” he says.

  “I know. Who was that woman on the phone?”

  “That, that was Faye, she’s a friend.”

  “She’s not just a friend dad, she’s a very dear friend. And what bothers me is not how dear you obviously are to each other, but that I've never heard of her. Why is that dad?” I look into his eyes, like I’m digging into his deepest secrets.

  “Steven, there is so many things I promised myself to tell you when we get to Nevada, things about me that your mother doesn’t know. I know you’ve seen me do things today, things you didn’t think I could do, and son, that’s because I’m not really a physics teacher, that’s just a cover. I’m a CIA operative.”

  I raise my eyebrows in surprise. “Really?” he nods. “Well that explains your ability to handle guns.”

  “Yes, it does. It wasn’t easy keeping all of it from you and your mother, especially you. It’s why I was going to tell you everything.”

  “So that woman, Faye, it’s not like you’re having an affair with her,”

  He shakes his head and nervously taps his finger on the steering wheel. “Actually, we are. All those times I traveled to Africa for summits, I was on missions. She’s my partner. At first, we were just really close, but it got deeper. I love her Steven.”

  “And mom?”

  “You know she always comes first.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking. Do you still love her?”

  “As ever.”

  “Then you know you have to end it.”

  He heaves a sigh. “I know.” He says.

  “Your friend Faye, she said something about carriers and Mars.”

  “Yeah she did. She said we’re evacuating to Mars, but we have to make it to the carrier on time.”

  “What is sunflower?”

  “Sunflower is a code name for the Washington Monument.”

  “So, you’re a spy,”

  “Yes, I am.”

  After five hours on the road, we enter D.C and drive straight to our house. There are dead bodies everywhere on the street. I see people I know running around for their lives, screaming for help.

  We arrive at the house. The front door is open. I jump out of the truck before it fully stops and run into the house. I hear gunshots. I make my way to the living room. Mom is there, surrounded by many black-eyeds, shooting at them, and she's backed against the wall, trapped. There are so many of them and she can’t shoot them all. Paul begins to shoot, taking some of the attention away from her, but most of the black-eyeds stay with her. I pull a flowerpot from the wall and hit it to the head of a black-eyed coming at me, the flower pot shatters. I try to fight my way to her, but there is too many of them.

  “Steven!” she screams. “Go!”

  She continues to shoot, and then she stops, looking at me. “I love you,” she says, crying.

  She turns the gun to her own head and right there in front of me, she squeezes the trigger. The sound of the shot fills me as I watch my mother go down, never to get up again. I feel my heart stop. She hits the floor and the black-eyeds go down on her, scraping on her with nails and teeth. I close my eyes and my entire body goes numb and I start to fall. Paul takes me and hauls me toward the door. My strength returns.

  “No!” I scream bitterly till my lungs are empty of air.

  Paul pulls me out of the house, shooting black-eyeds all the way. We run into the garage. He looks for the car key in the key box. I set the toolbox on the table, scatter its content and disassemble the box itself. I find a pistol in it. I check and see it’s loaded and fill my pockets with ammo. Paul stares at me, but I don’t stare back.

  “How long have you known that was there?”

  “I’ve always known.” I finally look at him, not as a sixteen-year-old boy who needs to be protected or told what to do by his father, but as a sixteen-year-old man who just watched his mother blow her own brains out.

  “We should go now,” Paul says coolly.

  We enter the car and drive, heading for Sunflower, the code name for the Washington Monument. We drive between buildings to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, but that don’t do us any good. The other end of the small road we are on is crowded with black-eyeds, but they are not running, they are walking, slowly, which is good, at least.

  “They are grouping?” I say. “It’s why that place in Ohio was empty, they are finding themselves.”

  Paul shifts the gear to 'R' and hits on the gas pedal and the car begins to reverse. The usual fast aggressive black-eyeds pour out from the other end of the road behind us, their creepy croak filling the air. Paul finds a small opening between two buildings and drives into it, hoping it's big enough, but it isn't. The car gets stuck between the buildings.

  From here, we see the main road and my jaw drops when I see what is out here. There are thousands of them out here, moving together like water flow. We can’t drive through them because there's too many of them, and we can’t go back. My heart begins to pound, and immediately, I’m considering putting the gun to my head and pulling the trigger, like my mom did. Then one question crawls up my mind; why haven’t we become one of these things? I saw it in the plane, it’s not physical contact, it’s airborne whatever it is, and we’ve been around it long enough to catch it, why haven’t we? Why did most of our neighbors turned and my mom did not? That curiosity makes me want to stay alive. And since dead people don’t get answers, I have to survive to get my answers. Mom would want me to survive. I open the door and spring out like someone with a plan, but I have none.

  “What are you doing?” Paul growls quietly.

  I look around for a moment, asking myself the same question in my mind––what am I doing?––I get an idea. “We’re surrounded by tall buildings, we have a better chance of escaping this flood if we go inside.”

  I don’t know if it is humanly possible to process information that fast, but he opens the door and springs out as soon as I’m done talking, he gets my point. We run to the nearest building, making out footsteps as quiet as we can. The black-eyeds are unaware of our presence, and we’ll like to keep it that way. We get to the door of the building and push, but it won’t open. Paul pushes harder and I kick, but it still doesn’t open. Paul takes two steps away from the door and looks at me, like he's waiting to see what my decision will be in this situation, then I realize, he's been doing it all along, I just haven't noticed. I draw my pistol, rack the slide and put four bullets into the glass of the door. The glass cracks, but stays together. I run into it, crashing down, and shards falling on and around me. I get up immediately and run, and he follows.

  The black-eyeds turn their heads in unison when they hear the gunshots, and they charge in our direction, their creepy sound more disturbing than ever. We enter the building and they follow. We find the elevator and run into it. I hit the button to the seventh floor, the last floor. They are gaining on us fast and the freaking elevator door is crawling. Damn! I hate elevators. I pull out my gun and hold it out, tightening my grip on the handle every second. They are now very close, and some of them will definitely get to us before the door is completely shut. I shoot, a black-eyed drops, then I shoot again and again, dropping black-eyeds after black-eyeds. Paul pulls his gun and starts to shoot too. The elevator door finally closes. I hit the button again.

  Paul stares at me as he tries to slow down his breath. “Since when do you know how to shoot a gun?”

  “Since Andy Davids?”

  “Andy Davids? That kid that died two years ago?”

  “He was killed,” I correct him. “Andy was killed on his way home from school, and everyone at school was scared, I was, mom too, so she bought a gun. She said if Andy had been taught to be strong, he could still be alive. She’d take me to a gun shop every Friday, and we’d learn how to shoot. I got
really good with targets.” I sniff.

  “Your mother bought fourteen years old you a gun and taught you how to shoot? And she never mentioned it to me?”

  “She said you are too gentle, too rational. She said you wouldn’t agree. She said and I quote ‘sometimes, you got to be irrational to survive, or you could end up dead like Andy’”

  “Jesus,” he mutters. “I guess I’m not the only one with se––”

  “Don’t even try dad,” I interrupt. “That was nothing like the things you kept from her. She was scared, and she was trying to protect me, you were away doing missions, and cheating on her.”

  The elevator stops and the door slides apart. I raise my gun immediately, him too. We move to the stairs and climb out to the top of the building.

  Out here, the sky is bright and the air feels consuming and easy, and friendly, but our world has changed so much that nothing can be friendly anymore, at least not permanently. For a moment I forget that I’ve spent the last hours running for my life and watched my mom died. I bite my lower lip so hard it bleeds when I remember my mom. I move to the edge and take a look down. I hear Paul stops himself from saying something, probably trying to tell me to be careful. But he must have realized I’m not a kid anymore.

  “What are we doing on the roof?” he asks.

  “We’re staying alive,” I say.

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “Yes, I have a plan.”

  I walk to the other side of the roof. The next roof is lower, at thirty feet away. “We jump.” I say.

  Paul walks to my side and take a very good look at the distance between the roof we are standing on and the next roof.

  “You think we can jump that?”

  “I can. The other roofs are almost connected, so this is going to be the only real jump.”

  He looks down between the buildings and shakes his head. “We’re not going to make that.”

  “Really? Then let’s make bed here and sleep.” I say. “You’re the spy, you should find these things easy.”

  He looks away, stung by my comment.

  “You know, I told her once. I told her I was having an affair and she laughed at it, she thought it was a joke. After that I couldn’t bring myself to tell her again.”

  “You told her, and yet it continued. What was the point of telling her in the first place? To make her feel bad?” I snap and then calm down.

  “No,” he says and sniffs. “I just couldn’t handle keeping so much from her. It was never easy for me Steven.”

  I know letting him feel this much guilt will make it hard for him to think straight, which will therefore cut down our chance of surviving, so I decide to change the subject.

  “Dad,” I say coolly. “Why are we not infected?”

  “I’m not sure. Faye said some people are immune to the virus. I guess we’re lucky enough to be among those people.”

  “You said you’ve seen the symptom before. Where?”

  “Back in ’98, I was part of a team that intercepted a mind control technology in Moscow. The tech infects people with a virus and the victims become puppets to whoever is controlling the virus.”

  “Controlling the virus?”

  “The virus is capable of many things like communicating with an outside signal, converting received messages to impulses, which are then conveyed to the muscles. It is also capable of temporarily shutting down the brain. They called it the Tsar-Virus.”

  “Wow,”

  “Some of the symptoms were black veins on the face and the back of the neck, and expansion of the black of the eyes. But I can assure you that is not what we’re dealing with here, and I wish it is, but it's not.”

  “So what's your job like, awesome?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that. It’s fun, but not awesome, not even close, I’m one of the lucky ones though.”

  “Lucky?”

  “I mean, most agent don’t get to have a real family.”

  I move away from the edge. “I think I get it now. Why that man jumped out of the plane without a parachute, why mom took her own life. I would to you know, if it ever comes to that, if I’m ever backed against a wall, surrounded by black-eyeds. It would become the most logical thing to do.”

  “Don’t think about that now Steven. I hope it never comes to that. We can make it to carrier, we will make it.”

  His words are soothing, and they help me relax my mind, but I’ve seen enough to know he’s only trying to make me feel better, and he doesn’t have the slightest idea if we’ll ever make it to the carrier.

  “That man on the plane,” he adds. “He pulled the door open like it was nothing.”

  “Yeah. That's strange right?” I say.

  The door that leads to the roof swings open and three black-eyeds squeeze themselves through the small doorway out to the rooftop, running toward us. Paul shoots them down.

  We look at each other, “They took the stairs,” I say. He nods.

  More black-eyeds pour out. I run to the edge of the roof and jump to the next roof, I barely make it. I grab the edge of the roof and pull myself over, I roll on my back. Paul lands next to me, he jumped better than I did. He helps me up and we run to the other side of the roof. The black-eyeds are not smart enough to jump, so they are falling off the building.

  The distance between the roof we are standing on and the next roof is only ten feet max, we jump it easily, and then we continue from roof to roof. On one of the roofs, black-eyeds pour out from the door that leads to the roof. I shoot whenever a black-eyed gets too close. We jump to the next roof and they follow. The distances between the roofs are now barely noticeable, and we are no longer jumping, just running across.

  We get to a roof and stop. The next roof is about fifty feet higher, and the building is about twenty-five feet away. Black-eyeds are coming hot, and we have about ten seconds to decide on what to do. Paul bends, his hands on his knees, he’s trying to catch his breath.

  “It’s a dead end.” I say.

  “No, it’s not. You’re going to watch and do exactly what I’m about to do.”

  He aims his gun at one of the windows on the next building and shoots twice. The bullets shatter the glass of the window. He shoves his gun into his waistband, takes two steps back and runs. He reaches the edge and he jumps. He goes down to the next building and falls in through the window he shot. He gets up and beckons me to come over. I shove my gun under my waistband, take five steps back, take a deep breath and run. When I reach the edge, I throw myself with all the strength I can summon. I begin to fall, screaming. As I get closer to the window, I realize I’m going to miss the window, but I can still grab the windowsill. I hold out my hands, ready to grab. My hands touch and slip off the sill. I begin to fall, but a hand grabs me on the arm. I look up, and Paul smiles down at me, his face turning red from struggling to hold my weight. He pulls me up the window and I collapse on him. He puts his hands around me tightly, he’s hugging me, but I’m too shocked to hug him back.

  I get up, my hands and legs shivering. Pieces of the broken window glass are in my palms. He pulls them out for me, and it hardly hurt because I can barely feel my hands.

  “We have to move now,” he says.

  We find the elevator and ride to the ground floor. The elevator door opens and suddenly, a loud bang fills my head. My shoulder stings, and then intense pain rushes in and then I don’t feel my left arm anymore.

  I notice a change in my angle and then something hits the side of my head. I blink and when I open my eyes, the floor appears right beside my face. What’s happening to me? I think, trying to voice it out, but my lips are numb. My head and half of my body are in great pain, and my left arm feels dead cold. I look down to the arm and see thick red liquid streaming out of it, just above the elbow. It is blood, my blood. I hear two gunshots, and then the floor vibrates slightly as if something heavy lands on it. I manage to move my head and see a woman on the floor, bleeding, and it all makes sense. She shot me, and now she’s dy
ing, or dead. Paul shot her.

  “Help her!” I scream.

  Paul kneels beside me and carefully attends to my wounded arm. He presses his thumb into the bullet hole, and I feel his thumb touch the bullet, and he removes his finger. He takes the hem of his shirt and rips a part of it. He ties the piece of cloth around the wound and helps me to my feet.

  “Help her,” I say.

  “She’s dead,” he replies.

  We hurry out of the building before black-eyeds find the source of the noises the guns made. We find a working car and find our way to a black-eyed-less road. I keep seeing that woman in her own blood and I keep trying to make the picture go away. I know he shot her not because he wanted to, but because he had to.

  It’s not long before the Washington Monument appears ahead, but still a little far away. The closer we get to the building the more it appears less a building and more of a space rocket, and it is many times bigger than I remember.

  “Isn't supposed to be the Washington Monument?” I ask.

  Paul looks as surprised as I am.

  One of the car's tires bursts and the car slows down to a stop. I remove my gun from my waistband and reload. We get out of the car. Dead bodies everywhere. The carrier is only a few minutes’ walk now. I hear the sound of a helicopter, but I don’t see any helicopter. I hear thick gunshots, different from the ones I’ve heard before. Paul pulls me close and we take cover beside the car.

  “What?” I say.

  “They’re shooting the black-eyeds.”

  That is bad. If they are shooting black-eyeds from way up there, it will be difficult to tell the difference between the black-eyeds and normal people like us. They will shoot us down before we can get close to the carrier. We move along the side of the road, through several dead bodies, keeping our heads down and staying out of the helicopter’s sight. Dead bodies don’t scare me anymore. We take cover in the woods by the road and cross over to the other side. From here, we see the carrier in totality. It’s about a thousand feet high and it’s big. and awesome.

  “I can’t believe the Washington Monument has always been a spaceship in disguise.” I say.