Those Who Lived

by Poss, Bryant

  1

  Light crept in what seemed like a single row of photons pulled on a cosmic string from nothingness. Perhaps it was the light, but more likely the perception of it that was born. A gentle hand with copper skin, itself scripted with ink, circling around, scribbling this way and that, filling in tiny divots first with black ink then with green, a little red. So meticulous was her detail, so centered her concentration. The object on which she drew had given her something when she felt there was nothing left. It helped to get her here, helped them all. There was something in her heart now that she’d not felt in a long time, and she welcomed it, this warmth. It helped eliminate the fear of what lay ahead. Now she wanted to make it more personal to her, this tiny orb on which she drew the eye, the something that appeared from nowhere, a small reminder of what used to be of a more civilized time, or an earlier one at least.

  “What you thinking about?” His voice took her from her thoughts.

  “I have a theory about how this will all play out,” she answered, continuing her work.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I think any children conceived after the pandemic will be alright.”

  “If that’s what the hell it was.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because they’ll be conceived by Immunes.”

  “You think this immunity will be passed on every time? One hundred percent?”

  “Why wouldn’t it? Both parents are immune.”

  “Well, I’m no geneticist, but two brown-eyed people won’t necessarily have a brown-eyed kid.”

  “Hmph.”

  “You could be right though. That’s certainly a good theory. Unfortunately only time will tell.”

  “Well we’re not gonna test the theory. I promise you that.”

  “Ha! No, we’ll be careful.”

  “There’s no way to be careful in this world anymore, but I’m not doing without lovin.”

  “Have you always called sex loving?”

  “It’s lovin, drop the G. And yes, I have. Does it matter to you what I call it?”

  “The way you do it, you can call it cat turd or strawberry shortcake, and I’ll still be as happy as a puppy with two peckers when you get horny.”

  “Then don’t worry about what I call it.”

  “Yes ma’am. How’s he doing, anyway?”

  “He’s burning up. It’s gotten too far along, and he desperately needs antibiotics. How long you plan on scoping out this pharmacy before going in?”

  “Long enough that I don’t get eaten. We’ve seen two spazzos in the past two days, and we just don’t know enough about them. Pokies I don’t mind so much as long as I don’t get cornered by one. They’re slow as dirt, but some spazzos are too fast to handle. That last one was faster than me. If you had missed, I’d be dinner.”

  “Well, you’re gonna have to go pretty soon, or it won’t matter. I bet his temp’s running one o four.”

  He stood up slowly, pressing his back against the wall next to the window and eased the cheap, plastic Venetian blinds back just enough to peer out. Rubbing the stubble on his cheek with the backs of his knuckles, he leaned forward squinting.

  “Looks clear.”

  “Famous last words.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he looked down at her, her dyed red hair draped over one shoulder. The boy whose head she held in her lap was sweating profusely, his breathing shallow and quick. “I’m going. You good here?”

  “Peachy.” He turned to go, but she stopped him with a snap of her fingers. “Wait, I want you to take this with you” Frantically coloring in the last part of the iris, she finished with a half-smile then took a different pen and carefully wrote a word on the small white ball she held in her hand. Examining her artistic efforts, she gave a nod then lightly tossed the ball to him. The room spun for a moment, light anxiety mixed with hormones dwindling. He caught the ball with a downward swing, a faint slap filling the silence of the room. He was confident, abnormally so, and emotional. This woman whom he’d only met not so long ago was intoxicating. Looking at the ball himself in similar examination, he couldn’t help but chuckle. The word Luck was written in neat print next to a lidless eye that took in all around it.

  “I meant to ask you why you even had this golf ball on you in the first place.”

  “It was just there,” she said matter-of-factly. “When you were stuck in that closet at the hospital, I looked down for something to throw and there it was just sitting there on the floor. I thought the eye was appropriate and the name obviously is.”

  “You know I don’t believe this thing is luck, right?”

  “I don’t see how you couldn’t, Ben. It’s already saved your life once.”

  “Whatever,” he replied, shoving it down into his pack and patting it a little sarcastically before stepping out of the room. Once out, he pulled the Glock from his thigh holster and pulled back the slide just enough to see the brass then he re-holstered it, took a few deep breaths, whispered to himself easy peasy, and left the pizzeria.

  The day was bleak, sky the color of old asphalt with clouds seeming to inch along covering the earth with dullness as if setting the stage for him. It disheartened him even now with that psychological effect. The world had gone to hell, yet the weather could still influence mood. At least he was human enough to experience it. Couldn’t complain about that. The wind blew in gusts, carrying that cool, early fall, and he stood beside the back door to the pizzeria for a full minute, just looking and listening, before heading up the sidewalk.

  There were the remains of dead in the street, but most were in cars. When the event hit—the infection or attack or whatever the hell it was—there were three results: death, immune, or turned and all of the dead lay exactly where they drew their last breaths since there was no one to clean up the mess. Well, there were people left, but they were too busy trying to not get caught by the infected. From what he could surmise, things seemed grim to say the least. It had been days since the occurrence, a number that blurred together now, yet there had been no military response, no law enforcement at all from what he had seen. If that were the case here, he could only assume it was the same everywhere in the state, the country, and even the world for that matter. There was not a more logical assumption in his mind. Of the seven and a half billion people on the planet, the majority seemed to have simply died from whatever caused the pandemic, but Immunes were the smallest population by far, or at least all evidence pointed to this conclusion. Either they made up the smallest population, or there were a shitload of people hiding from one another, scared to death of anything that drew breath, and from what he’d observed, that just didn’t seem to be the case. Judging by the lack of looting, he could only assume the event was swift for all and left few of those immune in its wake.

  A group of pokies wandered in the middle of the street about a block up from where he stood, and he paused to watch them. Spazzos didn’t mingle with pokies as far as he’d seen, but he just didn’t know enough at this point to bet his life on that. He hadn’t been in this world long enough. After a few saw him and began limping his way, he was satisfied that no fast ones were in the group, so he stepped up to the glass door of the pharmacy and pulled it lightly. Locked. He stepped back and looked at the door and the windows beside it, all unbroken, further evidence that everything had happened very fast; however, that could be seen as a good sign or bad considering there may be desperate Immunes inside unwilling to let anyone take their precious antibiotics. It didn’t matter. The boy was going to die without them, so he knew what he had to do.

  Prying a piece of loose concrete from the curb, he drew back to the throw it at the door but stopped and dropped it at his feet. “You’re not thinking,
” a whisper thrown at the wind. He made his way around the back of the one-story brick building to find another way in. The smell of rain was on the air.

  The back door was regular wood and took little more than a couple of kicks. Once inside, he was amazed at how untouched the place was. All the isles looked just as they would if he were coming to open for business. He walked past the cheap toys and candy and went immediately behind the pharmacist’s counter. Rows of white bottles and drawers lined both walls, and he couldn’t help chuckling at the treasure he beheld. Feeling particularly confident, he reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out an earpiece that he shoved in his ear. A wire led from the piece to the walkie-talkie on his belt, and he turned it on, going over and getting a stick of beef jerky before looking through the meds. He roamed around the small interior of the building, even making his way into a small private office. Once he was satisfied, he risked communication.

  “Psst” the customary greeting in the event the other person was hiding.

  Go ahead she said after a moment.

  “I found Solomon’s mine.”

  It’s like that?

  “It’s like that, baby, and then some. I’m bringing back azithromycin—”

  That’s fine, but he’s past that. Bring Bactrim if you’ve got it.

  “We’ve got everything. I’ve got a truckload of Percocet too.”

  For what?

  “For life.” He said defiantly. “What else do we need?”

  Get Tylenol for the fever—and Advil. Come to think of it, we’ll alternate every two hours.

  “What else?”

  They have cigarettes?

  “Nah, you know pharmacies quit selling them. I did find a fifth of Johnny Walker Black in the boss’s desk. Barely been touched.”

  That’ll work.

  “Oh, I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never experienced Lotus all the way under the influence before.”

  Call me Lo for god’s sake. My father named me Lotus, and he was the only one who called me that.

  “I love it. It reminds me of—”

  Let me guess, a flower, or maybe a car? Ben, you there? Ben?

  “Got pokies in here,” his voice was a whisper. “I thought it would take them a lot longer to get here.”

  You sure it’s pokies? Are you cornered?

  “No, but I don’t want to give them the opportunity. One’s strong enough. I don’t think I could handle two. I’m bagging up now. Damn, I really wanted to find some Xanax first.”

  It’s not worth it, Ben. Now hurry, I’ll have the back door unlocked. Try not to let them see you come in.

  He shoved all the bottles he could get in his pack, stuffed the earpiece back in his pocket then pulled his Glock. He didn’t know how many came through the back, but he could hear them shifting around. Pokies were nothing if not noisy. There was not much moaning or growling involved, but they were clumsy and knocked over anything they touched. There had to be several from the sound of the shuffling feet.

  The red of a fire extinguisher under the counter caught his eye as he looked up at the glass door in front of the store, the one he’d nearly shattered for his entrance. It needed a key to be opened even from the inside. He grabbed the extinguisher and pulled the pin. Using a rubber band from beside the cash register, he depressed the trigger, wrapped it with the band to keep it going, and threw it toward the back door where the pokies were. With the noise and commotion caused by the white, dry chemical spewing from the canister, he took the opportunity to make his way to the front door. He turned around to see if everything was clear and saw at least three pokies clawing at the white cloud spraying at them.

  With no key, he didn’t even break stride as he grabbed the comic book rack on the way to the door and slammed it into the glass. The door was thicker than he’d anticipated, and it took him two more attempts to get the glass out, but he finally squeezed through after a couple of minutes, the sound of pokies dragging down the aisle behind him.

  Ben stepped out onto the sidewalk, brushing the glass from his leather coat with the back of his hand, and that’s when he froze, the hair on the back of his neck and his forearms standing on end. Just down the street, about a block away on the sidewalk on his side of the road stood a spazzo. It wasn’t running yet, but its body language told him everything he needed to know, that it was no poky. It shook its hands at the end of its arms like it was trying to dry itself. Twitchy movements, spastic. Ben froze in position like a deer in the headlights, waiting and hoping that it wouldn’t notice him. That’s when he heard the first poky hit the glass behind him. He turned and risked a look, counting two of the pokies making their way through the broken glass toward him. There was no time to contemplate, and it was at that moment the decision was made for him. Down the sidewalk, the familiar scream of the spazzo, the hoarse yell of pure rage let out just before it began its pursuit. Ben didn’t even look in its direction, taking off across the street, trying desperately to make it back to the rear entrance of the pizzeria.

  He barely made it to the opposite sidewalk before the second set of shoes after his own slapping the concrete played in the background. The spazzo was fast, really fast, but he had yet to see one that wasn’t faster than an ordinary man. Ben could only assume that he was still alive because he was a runner anyway, with good lung capacity and a decent stride. He didn’t want to go into the building while being followed and risk the safety of those inside, but he had no choice. At the rate the spazzo was gaining, another block couldn’t be covered.

  “Got a spazzo with me!” he yelled in hopes that Lo heard him inside. Grabbing a light pole to help sling him around the corner without losing momentum, he saw the twisted face of what used to be a man coming at him, the distance between them now halved. It had on the remnants of a suit, the Italian leather of its shoes slapping the concrete hard and fast. Smack Smack Smack like a crude applause. There was a diagonal gash across its face, one of the eyes missing. He thought of stopping here and trying to put it down, but it was just coming too fast. So much different from pokies, but not as strong at least. Spazzos didn’t seem to have that super strength like pokies, just the speed.

  He hit the door with his shoulder at a full sprint, silently thanking Lo for having it open. Once inside, he spun to slam it shut, but the spazzo got its hand between the door and the frame. It started pushing him back, slobber and senseless noise coming from the face in rabid fury. It smelled like a dead animal in the sun. He wasn’t going to be able to push it back. In a panic, Ben lifted the pistol and put a round into its hand, but it didn’t draw back. In desperation he began pumping rounds through the door and into the spazzo in hopes of weakening it. Every explosion of the Glock ringing painfully in his ears, but he could hear Lo screaming his name from the locked door behind him.

  “Don’t open that door!” He yelled turning his head. The spazzo wasn’t slowing with the shots. It had a determination that Ben really couldn’t wrap his brain around. He kept pulling the trigger until he heard the sound of inevitability, the sound of the chamber locking after the last round. There was darkness.

  2

  The door opened with a groan, and the soft whistle of nasal breathing filled the room. The steady sound stayed in one spot across the room for some time, minutes. Finally the shifting of feet, the closing of the door, feet coming closer. There was a quick drawn breath. Not a gasp, just the sound of a little surprise. Another minute went by, the shutting of another door, the sliding of something heavy. A hand in the bag rummaging through its contents, it paused when it found it. Slowly, she withdrew the hand with the ball clasped firmly as if it were some god’s eye.

  Lo looked at Luck, the ink already beginning to lose some of its vibrancy, dust from the bag clinging to the once fresh ink, and she winced at the sight of it. There was a special feeling for Ben, and that was something rare for her in a world that had once been full of them. They’d found each other when they needed someone most, and they’d just clicked, that rare occurrence
like two strangers striking up a conversation in a bookstore, only to find that they were the other half of each other. She’d met a woman like that a long time ago, and she’d lost her, but she’d never found it with a man. Gripping the ball fiercely in her hand, she looked around the room again, but there was nothing. Nothing indicated what had happened to Ben or the spazzo except for a small puddle of blood just inside the door. It was illuminated by the sunlight coming through the numerous bullet holes in the wood as if on display. She sat thinking for several minutes. What could’ve happened to him? There had been a struggle after the gunshots, but neither was here now to indicate a winner. It made no sense. Making her way to the outside, .38 at the ready, she went so far as to check the side street that led to the pharmacy, the street Ben had used to get back, but only a few pokies shuffled around at the intersection like drunks. None looked in her direction. The other side of the entrance showed little else. Dumpsters and cardboard bins, the common fixtures of any small business. What in the hell could have happened? After ten minutes of her searching, attracting the pokies was unavoidable, and the mystery had to be left open. She couldn’t think about it anymore now. As much as she wanted to lose herself in the idea of it, the boy was waiting. He wouldn’t make it much longer, and she knew it. The pack was left on the floor with the meds inside, either a stroke of fortune or Ben left it before running from something else. Putting her faith in the latter, she grabbed the bag and hurried back behind the second door in the kitchen of the pizzeria where the boy was lying on her coat for a pillow.

  Lo grabbed one of the bottled waters from underneath the counter and propped the boy’s head in her lap once again. He lay unconscious, mumbling at her with every touch. She tapped his cheeks a few times, a little too hard with the last one but she needed to be sure he’d swallow the medicine. The boy felt like a radiator. The antibiotics went down with water, ludicrous sized pills, then the liquid Tylenol, about fifty percent more than the normal dose. He took it down along with some more water thankfully. She checked the gauze on his hand to make sure it was still clean, and once satisfied she laid it gently back on his waist. Now all she could do was wait. The boy took water when she gave it, not much but he took it, and that was just as important as his taking the medicine. Dehydration was a killer of men. A swallow must be gotten down his throat every few minutes while the medicine did its work, but she really wished she could get him hooked up to some fluids. No need thinking about what couldn’t be done, only on what there was control over.