by D.C. Clemens
Chapter Twelve
Recollections
It only required two days after the power deserted us for Neves to find another way to help others. He became involved with a city council project to donate the more quickly perishing food to homeless and aid centers across town so they would not go needlessly wasted. Liz, Orins, Bervin, and I joined in the effort, though, in all honestly, my initial motive for doing so was to have something to keep my mind employed. Orins and Liz united with Neves on his trip in the truck to keep the family reunion together, while Bervin and I ended up undertaking our own path in the van. Dayce wanted to join us, but Liz felt uneasy about him entering the debilitated town. He stayed home with his grandmothers once I reminded him of his job to keep his mother’s heart as untroubled as possible.
In the process of taking the produce to the first couple of shelters, I found my disposition was eased by the sight of regular folks cooperating and comforting each other instead of delving into the anarchy I feared would take over. I always believed, or wanted to believe, people were inherently good-natured, but it was still reassuring to see it firsthand during a disaster. Still, just underneath the skin, there was an unmistakable tension in the muscles of many, ready to spring loose with the slightest provocation. Each shelter was filled to the brink, and there was a sort of foreboding in almost every eye within. It was impossible from stopping myself from wondering if I too would soon become acquainted with their notion of intolerable hunger as a daily occurrence.
A little passed noon, on the outing before our last, I entered a shelter that was not much different from the others. I was carrying a stack of boxes containing sweet fruits into the shelter like I had done in my previous visits, however, I had to walk using my peripheral vision to guide me on this run, given that the only view I had in front of me was the side of a cardboard box.
“Excuse me, where do I put these?” I asked the back of a shelter volunteer, who I partially saw in front of me. I tried not to sound as though I was in too much discomfort, but it was obvious I had somewhat encumbered myself.
“Oh, goodness. You’ve surely proven yourself to be quite a strong fellow holding on to so many boxes,” she responded mockingly. “If you can, please place them on the counter.”
My heart pumped faster with each new word she uttered. The woman’s voice gave me an incredibly strong sense of nostalgia, which taxed me much more than the burden I carried. “Siena?” I queried cautiously, afraid of being embarrassed if my presumption was wrong. Before she could respond, I saw the answer with my own eyes after I laid the delivery where she directed me. Undeniably, it was her standing in front of me, and for the first time in a long time, it was not just in my head. Her golden eyes met my own and her expression became just as astonished, if not more so.
“Roym?” she asked, echoing the essence of my question with a composed suppression of her bafflement.
We must have been static in word and deed for only a second, but her intense eyes kept me from caring exactly how much time had elapsed. It would not have surprised me if Bervin came up to me to tell me night had already fallen. After nine years apart, my memory of her rich, glossy eyes was as vivid as ever, but it gave no challenge to the actual articles.
She awkwardly extended one of her hands toward me and then quickly adjusted by rising both arms, all while in the process of leaning in, before she ultimately gave up on the task all together and put them both down. She flashed me an uncomfortable smile. Showing I did not mind, I embraced her first, which I don’t believe she was expecting. I had forgotten she was shorter than Liz, as my chin was able to rest on the top of her head. I mostly did it to ease her nerves, but letting go was not so simple.
“Roym, what are you doing here?” she asked me, withdrawing from my arms. “I mean, I knew you were in town, and it looks like you’re volunteering, obviously. So I guess it isn’t so weird that you’re here.”
“I see you’re still answering your own questions,” I said, an uncomplicated smile attached with the message.
“Only when I’m nervous, which is all the time now. So, how are Liz and Dayce?”
“Liz is volunteering as well, but she’s with her father and brother in another shelter. Dayce is at home with her mom and mine. Bethma is actually teaching him how to fish as we speak. How ‘bout your sister? Is she here too?”
“She’s back with Mom at the hospital,” she answered, her visible anxiousness all but vaporized. “I was there too, but I needed a breather. I can’t help feeling bad for leaving, but I don’t have Valssi’s constitution.”
“You’re too hard on yourself,” I said, having a flashback of saying that to her before. “If volunteering at a shelter is your idea of a breather, then you have nothing to feel bad about. I bet more people are edging closer to mob rule than helping anyone else.”
“People are scared, and frightened animals rarely act rationally. Who knows, maybe a few thousand more years of evolution and we’ll become completely logical-minded beings.”
Her comment had me wondering whether we would get the opportunity to find out if the world would be able to see the next year, much less a few thousand.
Siena must have either realized the same concept I did or read the somber look in my face I was unable to conceal, since her uncomfortable smile returned. She rolled her eyes and said, “There I go again, making things awkward. We should probably get back to work. Anyway, it was nice to see-”
She was gradually interrupted by the escalating hum of engines coming from outside. When I turned to the direction of the rumbling sound, I saw a convoy of military vehicles—comprising of jeeps, tarped-roofed trucks, and other heavily armored conveyances I was not qualified to identify—passing the building. Their presence enticed many to stand by the windows, some practically ramming their faces against the glass, while others went into the streets for a better view. I suppose Siena and I were among those magnetized, for we were already standing among those in the quivering sidewalk before I became aware of where I was.
Almost every soldier I could see riding in the transports had a guise on their face I had never thought I would be so close to witness on a soldier; a look of not only misfortune, but of outright misery. I felt as if I was gawking into a television screen, as we all seemed invisible to them. None of them offered one regard to us no matter how many spectators stared or waved. The majority of the vehicles kept on the same road in their chronic convoy until three trucks near the end of the line opposed the succession and turned their way to the hospital, which was only a couple of blocks down the left side of the road. This was the same hospital where Siena’s mother and sister were working.
“Let’s go see if we can find anything out,” I told Siena at the same time I was walking up to Bervin, who had stopped unloading food by the van to watch the spectacle taking place. “I’ll be right back,” I informed him. “I’m going to see what I can find out.” I didn’t bother to wait and see if he assented or not before I rejoined my former fiancé.
Siena and I approached the hospital at a brisk pace, where we saw a number of soldiers unloading their injured and carrying them inside without so much as a word to one another. Siena and I kept our respected distances from the scene. It wasn’t until all the wounded soldiers were marshaled inside did we choose to move in closer. Two of the three military vehicles left as soon as we arrived, with four soldiers staying behind. Two of them stood by the entrance with a few police officers close by, though they were not conversing much, which was no fault of the officers, since the soldiers did not seem to be the most approachable of pairs. The other two were sitting at the edge of their truck bed. We headed for those on the military vehicle. One of them was a young man no older than his early twenties and the other was a woman who was probably in her early thirties. They were both younger than I, and yet, I knew that they were far older than me in many respects.
“Let me start the talking,” Siena advised me in a whisper when we were in front of the tro
ops. She was a better conversationalist than I, but I also knew to defer to her when it came to dealing with soldiers, given her family experience. She turned to them and said, “Sergeant, I’m sorry to see so many of your comrades injured.”
“Not as sorry as you’ll be in a few days,” cantankerously answered the male soldier, who kept his eyes on the smoke climbing out of his cigarette.
“Not here, private!” ordered the sergeant. He only flashed an indifferent glance at her. “Sorry about him,” she replied to Siena, completely subduing the displeasure she had displayed. “We’ve been through some shit.”
“I don’t want to even imagine it,” returned Siena, “but I’ve lived with imagining the worst all my life. My father was in the Army and my brother is now in the Navy. He’s out there somewhere and I can’t even find out where he is. Is it possible you can tell me what happened after the lights went out?”
After a short sigh, the sergeant said, “Nothing good. The line I was in was the backup to the quarantine line, so we were about a mile out from downtown Iva. I saw the city go dark and all but our most basic equipment stopped working. Even those cinderblock-sized radios that should survive anything were useless. Despite all that, some of the attack kept going, but there was no visible progress. I watched tank fire, missiles, RPG’s, everything we still had hit that thing and it didn’t even budge. After a while, I began noticing the rate of attack was weakening-”
“I know why,” interjected the private, still not looking at anything in particular. “I was on West 49, right on the quarantine line with that fucker half a mile away. Right after the lights went out I could see a bunch of objects start falling from the top of the Tower. I saw them with my binoculars while using the light from the explosions. There must’ve been hundreds of them, and I know they were the ones that started breaking our lines and making everyone…”
The last words lingered on the private’s tongue, unable to escape. He drew a long drag from his cigarette, reflecting on an untold horror, before he jumped from the truck while exhaling the smoke from his nostrils, leaving it behind him. With the three of us watching him, he walked deeper into the parking lot without saying anything more.
After shaking her head and with her eyes still pasted to her subordinate, the sergeant said, “The quarantine line saw the worst of it. Most didn’t make it.” Her voice was as somber as she could conjure it to be. She then scrutinized us with an expression of pity. If she pitied him or us, I could not say. “From what I gathered from the survivors, they were at some point being fired on with an assault of hypodermic-like needles. Those things must have been filled with a fast acting form of the infection, because within minutes they turned into mindless killers.” She was looking at us, but I sensed she was really looking off at a far-off place I desired never to see. “Much of the quarantine line experienced this hyper-infection. As a result, those who were not infected began pulling back. Our standby line became the main one and we were forced to kill the oncoming infected. Fucked up, isn’t? Allies becoming enemies in a matter of minutes…” She shifted her body so that she was now sloping on the side of the truck. Undoubtedly, her mind was also shifting inside.
“Did you see what fired those needles?” I asked her, hoping and succeeding to bring her back to the present. I spoke in a low tone, though that did not hinder her hearing me, as the three of us seemed to be temporarily detached from the outside world during her despondent account.
“Injectors,” she answered. “That’s our fancy name for them. Our line was regularly being assaulted by the infected. They started to pour out of the city by the hundreds as our front line barriers failed. We were stretched too thin, so we began retreating to find a more defensible position. That’s when I first saw them. Well, I guess I technically didn’t see them. It was just a vague outline. I heard some soldiers that were running behind me start to scream. When I looked back, I saw six or seven men squirming ten feet in the air, being held up by something I couldn’t see. Still, two or three of them were able to fire at this invisible something. As their bullets landed, I saw their impacts caused some kind of ripple effect, which sort of allowed me to see the outline of the alien machine… If it was a machine.
“It must have been at least fifteen feet tall. I know it was slender, like a skeleton, but I can’t give you a definite shape beyond that. The soldiers were dropped by the Injector after a few seconds. My legs wouldn’t move, and I was sure I was next on its list, when I suddenly heard the music of a .50 Cal start firing at the invisible fucker. The Injector turned its attention to its attacker, but it didn’t seem to be fazed at all by the bullets. It then fired those needle-like things at the gun operator. That’s the last thing I saw before I finally got my ass moving. I don’t know how long I ran, but I eventually reached the area where most of the others were falling back to. I don’t know if it was the sun rising or the line of double-barreled tanks nearby, but we didn’t get any more trouble from the Injectors that day. Anyway, more and more infected kept pouring out, and they’re a bitch to take down. Shooting them just a few times doesn’t work. Some even still move after being practically decapitated. You think you got them after blowing away half their brains, but nope, they just pop back up and keep coming as fast as ever.”
“Where are you heading now?” asked a dry-mouthed Siena.
“Most were ordered to regroup south of the river,” the sergeant answered without any delay between her words. “My group was to go as far west as we could and instruct every town along the way to make sure to do the same.”
“Evacuate?” Siena said with surprise, corresponding to what I was thinking and feeling.
“Yes, but it isn’t mandatory. We don’t have the manpower to make everyone leave, but thousands if not millions of the infected are spilling out from the city, and really, the river will be better at holding them back than we are.
“How long do you think we have?” I asked.
She shook her head. “There’s no way of knowing. Maybe the infected don’t come this way or our lines actually hold, but I do know those Injectors will go anywhere there are people. The only reason you might still have some time is because hundreds of thousands are still between you and them.”
The sergeant was now struggling to keep her drained eyes open and her weary mouth was moving in slow motion. Siena concluded it would be selfish for us to remain any longer.
“Thank you, sergeant, for the valuable information you gave us. May the Spirits guide you.”
“I hope your brother is okay, but you should concentrate on yourselves,” said the sergeant, her eyes closed at this point. “Also, for whatever its worth, may our ancestors guide us.”
I hoped her sleep would at least give her some level of respite.
With every kind of thought brimming our minds and our hearts disheartened, the walk back to the shelter was a mute one. It was tough for me to put all I learned into perspective. What was worse was concluding that I could never grasp it until the savagery entered my reality. It wasn’t until both of us actually saw the shelter in front of us did our words leave their purgatory.
“Will you go?” Siena first asked me, her eyes meeting mine for the first time since the start of our walk back.
“I don’t know.” My eyes stayed with the ground. I wished I had an answer that was more decisive, but I did not have one, so all was left for me to do was tell the truth. “Based on what the soldier said it sounds too risky to stay, but… Where else would we go? How far can we go?”
“Dad has been talking about leaving,” she said in a low voice, a voice I felt I would always hear from her from then on. “But Mom’s been hesitant. She doesn’t want to leave the hospital.” I stopped in mid-stride. She walked a few extra steps before noticing I had stopped. “What is it?”
“I don’t know if we’re going to decide to leave or stay, but I think if both our families decide to do the same thing, then it makes sense to help each other out. It’ll be psychotic to kee
p all of us divided when it’s clear that we need as many trusted people as possible.”
“You’re right. My mother and sister do still hate your guts, but they’ll have to agree.” I almost thought a smile was about to cross her face, but it never appeared.
Ignoring the obvious fact about her mother and sister, I informed her, “Whatever we decide, I’ll try to let you know somehow. If we both happen to agree, then we’ll go from there.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
With graceless nod from each of us, we went our separate ways.