by Sean Platt
A siren blared in the distance. Several more immediately echoed. Ryan chewed his lip, then walked the rest of the way down the aisle, over the dead officer, past Pete, then to the front of the store where he saw two of his people on the ground. One was Bill, face down in his own blood. And then he saw her -- Clarissa, lying on the ground and staring straight up, blood bubbling in her mouth. Her eyes met Ryan’s, and she tried to speak.
“Oh my God,” he said, kneeling down.
“Come on!” Pete screamed.
“She’s still alive!” Ryan said, “I have to help her.”
Pete marched over, looked down at the girl, and aimed the gun at her face.
Ryan screamed, and tried to reach out, but was too late. Pete pulled the trigger.
“Come on!” Pete said, grabbing Ryan by the back of the neck, forcing him to the front doors and out into the parking lot.
It was a short drive to Viktor’s pad, surprisingly close. Ryan always thought the guy lived further out. They were inside the house for five minutes or so, Pete explaining things to Viktor in a whisper on the other side of the door. Viktor’s anger was nearly silent, but fuming and thick in the air, even with an oak door between them.
Another guy, Ryan had once heard Pete call Stink, came out of Viktor’s room, walked up to Ryan and slid a needle into his neck before Ryan even noticed what was happening. Ryan felt a few seconds of familiar euphoria, then his eyes rolled to the back of his head, and his face fell flat on the cream-colored shag carpet.
Ryan opened his eyes to darkness. He had no idea how long he’d been out, only that his head was pounding and the room was pitch-black. He heard a whistle-like thunder outside, then a deafening crash that shook the walls.
“Anyone here?” Ryan cried, voice hoarse. “Someone wanna tell me what the fuck that was?”
He stood up, groggy, then fell to the ground again.
More darkness.
When he woke again, it was morning.
He made his way to the hallway, down the stairs, and out the unlocked front door. The sky outside was a weird shade of purple, and smoke billowed from three different directions.
What the hell?
He had to get out of there. Now.
Ryan thanked Christ there were keys in the Mercedes. He figured stealing Viktor’s car was a one-way ticket to the graveyard, no doubt about it. But then again, Ryan figured that ticket was already punched. Best to get to Mexico, Canada, or anywhere else where they had good, long distance and cheap plastic surgery. First, he’d have to get Mary and Paola to come with him. They were sitting targets as long as Viktor was alive.
He pulled away from Viktor’s estate, shuddering at the plumes of smoke and vaguely remembering the sound of explosions in the night.
I’m free now. None of that matters.
Ryan kept driving, and didn’t stop for 212 miles. He was well into daylight before his mind surfaced the shocking reality: The roads were void of motion, and vacant cars littered the asphalt.
The world had died; he was alone.
Eight
Desmond Strong
Desmond filled a duffel bag with the things that mattered most, finishing with an 8 gig memory card. While he used to love taking photos, he’d nearly forgotten cameras existed until about six weeks earlier and felt ridiculous for having waited as long as he had. It was still too early to tell if this was the end of forever or the beginning of a global reboot, but either way, if the survivors didn’t document it, who would?
Desmond would give anything to have pictures of the first month: their flight from Warson Woods, the wreckage of the storms that looked as if the world had stacked an entire city into a pile, the bodies in the river, and their time at the Drury; the frantic search for John, the horrific, ghostly flight from the inn, and every rancid minute stumbling through the following month until everything finally fell into place in their newfound home.
Pictures were evidence, and evidence was data. Data made decisions easier to make. Data could help you swallow the stuff your instinct begged you not to.
Stuffing the duffels was horrible. Worse this time than the last. Was this how it would be forever? Always running, never stopping, hanging their hats until the horizon lined with the undead . . . or whatever they were?
Desmond shuddered. In five months he’d grown accustomed to much of the new world, but the bleakers still made him feel every bit as sick as they had on first sight. Most of the new world was still a mystery, but the bleakers were a mystery that wanted to kill you while they rotted in front of your face.
What are they?
Are their numbers growing?
Were they once people?
Was it possible for him, and the others, to become bleakers, too?
Desmond couldn’t help but feel that if he’d taken pictures back at the Drury he’d have more answers now. And how hard would it have been to find a quality camera in an empty inn? But the truth was, answers weren’t why he started taking pictures.
It was Mary.
First, it was just pictures of her and Paola together, then he added pictures of their surroundings, the compound, the surrounding woods. Once he felt his old groove, the groove that had filled his old hard drive with 100 gigs of gorgeous photos, Desmond moved the lens into the bedroom.
At first, Mary was shy. But not for long. The curve of her breasts; the slightly wide hips that made her self-conscious, but made her look like a real woman to Desmond. Her neatly trimmed pubic hair. Desmond found it extra sexy, looking as neat as it did at the end of the world.
Desmond connected with Mary the way he’d always wanted to, but never could, with a woman. The way he imagined it could be. The way he saw his Uncle Jeremy connect with his Aunt Hazel, his mom’s sister.
Part of the problem had always been Desmond. He figured if a woman was into him, at least part of it had to be for the money. Most of him knew it was ridiculous – he was reasonably smart, handsome, and funny – but the rest of him couldn’t help the uncharacteristic self- doubt.
But at the end of the world, money didn’t matter, which meant his guard was dropped where it belonged. His relationship with Mary had been born in an instant, three weeks away from the Drury, smack in the middle of a hard snow without any food and little hope for survival. Their mouths met before either knew what was happening. It was over in minutes, maybe seconds. But it was only the beginning.
When the snow thawed, so had something frozen inside Desmond. Mary, too. It was plain to see. She didn’t try to hide it, not even in front of Paola, who clearly didn’t care for the coupling.
Paola was nice enough to Desmond; she might have even loved him. But that didn’t mean she wanted him with her mom. Not that Desmond blamed her. Her father, Ryan, deserved the loyalty. But he was gone, like 99 percent of the world. Desmond could tell that Paola wanted to get over it, wanted it to be okay, but her real feelings were obvious in the way she answered Desmond’s questions too slowly, or too quickly, or rejected his ideas with numb indifference.
Mary opened the door. “Luca will be down in five,” she said. “Everything ready?”
“Yeah,” Desmond nodded. “I was just coming to get our Everyday Bag.” He held the leather duffel up for her approval. “Come on, I’ll walk you downstairs. Luca can meet us.”
Mary raised her eyebrows, but Desmond insisted.
“You can’t treat him like he’s 8. He may not be mentally caught up with his body, there’s no way to account for the missing experience, but the chemistry is there. The boy’s brain has changed. He’s at the tail end of adolescence. And we all need to be aware of it.” Desmond drew a breath before adding, “I trust Luca more than anyone in the world, including me and you, but I think we need to watch him around Paola.”
Mary said, “I’m already on it.”
They went downstairs, then outside. Everyone was inside their cars, seven in total, except Will, who was standing outside the final car waiting for Desmond, Mary, and Luca. Paola was already s
itting in the back row. Mary and Desmond gave a light nod to John, sitting in the passenger seat of a town car in front.
“Isn’t anyone else concerned that John showed up from nowhere?” Desmond asked. “After disappearing for months, right when we needed him most?”
It was said in a whisper, and only to Mary, but Will answered. “I am. And I’ll bet my share of the garden, if we get one look at Honest John’s Shangri-La, that there’s something none of us are gonna like not too far away. He never did seem like much of a team player, and doesn’t strike me as the type to cross a state for a heroic I’m sorry. But then again, maybe I’m wrong. Sure as shit hope I am.” Will climbed inside the van. Desmond and Mary followed.
Like usual, Desmond felt he was only hearing the tip of Will’s iceberg. And though Will obviously thought they should follow John wherever he was going, he wasn’t happy about it.
Desmond and John had nearly come to blows, a heated argument in the aftermath of Jimmy’s murder. Desmond had backed down, not because he didn’t want to make John swallow every one of his teeth, but because the words coming from John’s mouth seemed so cruel they were almost inhuman. It was as though he’d forgotten every social boundary, demolishing the dam of what society saw as acceptable.
Desmond figured it for undiluted grief and turned his cheek. John disappeared. An hour later, the bleakers began to breach the inn. Will led them all to the second floor where they barricaded the stairwell and waited for death. But by nightfall, every bleaker had disappeared. They never returned; neither did John.
John had run off to have a temper tantrum, leaving them to certain death, but was now suddenly interested in their welfare? It made no sense. And it didn’t exactly seem like he was sorry; it seemed a lot more like he was turning a to-do into a to-did.
Desmond wasn’t a guy who held grudges. And maybe the grudge he had for John was the first one he’d had in his life, but it was a grudge nonetheless. A grudge without an antidote. That self-centered asshole had taken off and left him to his fate, along with an old man, two children, a mom, and a murdered kid. Fuck him.
The way John had been unable to handle his anger, the way he’d practically melted his humanity, center stage for all the Drury Inn to see, Desmond wouldn’t doubt it if he’d been the one responsible for Jimmy, even if the bleakers had done the act. And judging by the silences that sat between the sentences no one wanted to say, everyone else at the Drury thought the same thing. Fuck him.
Even if he’d pulled them out of the fire today, Desmond harbored a frying pan’s worth of anger. But still, the rest of their new friends couldn’t feel the same way, and Will was obviously on board, even if it was just to get them from point A to B. Desmond was enough of a team player to bunt so long as they needed him to. Fuck him later, follow for now.
“What are you thinking?” Mary asked.
“He’s thinking that we’re driving into a rising tide of certain bullshit, and we both know he’s right,” Will said.
Paola looked scared. Mary looked at Will, quietly pleading with him to be quiet.
“She’s old enough to know,” he said, “And help us when the time comes. Him, though,” Will pointed out the window at Luca, quickly approaching the van, “I’m not sure where he is right now, other than his own world. So let’s just play it cool, follow John to nirvana, and see what happens.”
Everyone nodded. Luca opened the door, tossed his bag inside, then climbed onto the seat, swinging the door behind him.
“I think you might be surprised,” Luca said. “I don’t think we’re driving into a trap at all. I think we’re finally going where we’re supposed to go. I think we’re finally at the beginning.”
Desmond stared at Luca, wondering how the hell he’d heard their conversation from so far away.
Nine
Luca Harding
The vehicles rolled in a procession down the highway; John’s car led. The van carrying Will, Desmond, Mary, Paola, and Luca was in the rear. Everyone else, including Scott, who’d made a full recovery, was somewhere in the middle.
Luca felt kinda like a prisoner. They were in the back of a van that had big plates on the side, which Luca thought looked like armor. And the van was being driven by two strangers who both looked to John every time they were about to open their mouths.
Desmond looked mad; Mary looked worried; Will was staring out the window.
Paola’s face wasn’t as easy to read. They’d been driving for five or six miles and she hadn’t said a word without prompting, and only delivered one-line answers whenever Luca asked her a question. She looked a little scared, but mostly confused. It probably had something to do with him looking like a grownup.
It was like the time when Luca’s dad shaved his mustache. His father had worn a mustache since before he was born, so when Luca ran downstairs one morning last May and saw the fresh, pink skin above his dad’s lip, he almost felt like his father was a stranger. Throughout the rest of that day, all of the next, and into most of the following week, Luca had a hard time looking his dad in the eye. It was difficult to find balance between what his brain told him to see what he actually did.
Luca figured Paola probably didn’t want to ignore him, but didn’t know what else to do. Which is why he wasn’t altogether surprised, though totally happy, when she finally adjusted her seatbelt, turned to her left, and looked Luca in the eye.
“What’s it like,” she said, “you know, aging like that? It’s gotta be weirder than weird, right? Are your insides like your outsides? I mean, you look all grown up, but you must still think like you used to. You would have to.”
Luca leaned closer to Paola and spoke in a whisper, not wanting Will, Desmond, or Mary to hear him, not to mention the two drivers up front, though he was pretty sure everyone could hear every word anyway.
“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “My brain feels really busy. Lots of colors and noise. Like a big bucket of Legos being dumped out and refilled, over and over. They’re all moving around in my head so much that I can’t build anything. It’s just really, really loud, and I can see all the different colors and shapes but I can’t do anything with them because they won’t stop moving. Some of those Legos are the ways I used to think, but now there are a bunch of new Legos. So, I guess I’m supposed to learn how to put the blocks together.” He looked at Paola, then added, “Does that make sense?”
“I guess,” she said, leaning in her seat. After a minute she looked back over.
“You talk different now, you know. Not like you used to at all. Well, except using Legos to reference things,” she said with a smile. “But it’s weird because you don’t talk like you’re supposed to, either.”
“How am I supposed to talk?” Luca said, unable to hide his injured expression.
Paola’s cheeks flushed. “I don’t know,” she said. “At least, not exactly. It just seems like you’re not quite ... ” Paola swallowed, then fell silent, thinking a moment before opening her mouth again. “Remember in school how there were two playgrounds, one for the older kids and one for the younger kids? At least that’s how it was in my school.”
Luca nodded. “Yeah, the kindergartners have their own playground. First, second, and third all shared the playground with the swings and slides. Fourth and fifth got the playground with the tetherball poles and handball courts. We weren’t allowed to play there, and the older graders always kicked us out when we tried. Sixth and seventh-graders went to the middle school next door.
“Okay,” Paola said. “Well, it seems to me like half of you has moved to the bigger playground even though you’re supposed to still be on the smaller one. And you can’t play tetherball or foursquare because you’ve never been on the playground before and no one’s told you the rules.”
Luca felt like he was about to cry. While he’d always been sensitive, he felt especially so with all these new feelings rushing through his head.
Paola touched his shoulder then brushed his arm. It tickled. “Don’t
be sad,” she said. “The same thing happened to me one time, at least sort of.” She smiled. “Not that I aged overnight like you, or anything. You definitely have me beat there.”
Paola laughed, and Luca felt happy enough to copy her smile.
“After my mom and dad first split up, I didn’t see my dad for a long time. I’m pretty sure it was about three months, though it felt like forever. My mom was so mad she didn’t even want to let my dad in the house. One time, she locked him outside in his underwear.” Mary turned her head toward the back seat, but Paola just shrugged. “It’s true,” she said.
“Anyway, when he came back home to visit, there was this weird distance between us. And it wasn’t just that he’d been gone, or that he knew he’d ruined things by cheating on my mom.” Mary looked back again, but Paola just glared until she turned back around, then went on. “It was more that I had changed in that time. He didn’t know how to look at me, and in a lot of ways, I wasn’t the little girl from three months earlier. I could tell he wanted to cuddle me, and tickle me, and play with me just like before. But everything felt different to him. And he had missed all the things in between. Not just the school stuff like my fourth-grade graduation from lower school and my violin recital. Other stuff, too. Like finding out about Santa Claus and my mom buying me my first training bra.”
Luca could feel himself turning red.
Mary kissed Desmond on the cheek, then turned back to Paola. “What really did it,” she said, “Was when he saw the stack of books on your nightstand. In his eyes, you’d gone from Harry Potter to Twilight overnight. That made him lose it.” She turned to Luca. “Luca, you’re unbelievably special, and we all owe you a debt we can never repay. We may not understand what’s happening to you, but we all know we owe you. Everything will be okay, and your insides and outsides will match soon enough.”
