Jack fell to his knees. His abdomen buckled and he fell to his hands. He panted on all fours like an injured puppy. I finally used what energy I had left and crawled to him and put my hand on his back. His shirt was soaked from the water.
Glen rubbed his own forehead. The sheer amount of people in the room elevated the temperature a few degrees.
“Take him to the holding cell. I’ll be there shortly.”
“What?” I responded. Darren was smiling.
District 7-1 soldiers walked a B line to Jack and I. I grazed my hand across Jack’s back and grabbed his shoulders. I pulled him into my chest and wasn’t going to let somebody rip him away from me too easy. I was ready to get thrown in a jail cell with him.
“Not him,” Glen said. Every person stopped. Every pair of eyes shifted to Glen.
“What?” asked the soldier.
“You are not arresting this man,” Glen said.
“But you said —.”
“I want you to take Captain Kendrick to the holding cell.” He pointed so intellectually like Alex Trebek pointing to an answer on Jeopardy.
“Sir?” repeated the soldier.
“I want you to place Captain Darren Kendrick under arrest and transport him to the holding cell.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Glen?” Darren asked.
“You attacked these people. You killed them. They brought us no danger and yet you acted like a deranged animal, Darren. You’re under arrest. I cannot trust you. Not anymore. You will stay in the holding cell until I can have some time to process all of this.”
“You’re wrong. Glen.”
“Not about this,” Glen responded. “Arrest him.”
The soldiers hesitantly began putting Darren into handcuffs. He didn’t fight back as they pulled his hands behind his back.
“You’re wrong. They’re going to kill us. They’re going to ruin everything, Glen. You’re dead wrong. You’re going to get everyone killed!” His voice grew louder with every sentence.
“Could you blame them if they did? You murdered their friends in cold blood.” His hands went up as if offering Darren to God. “You’re a monster.”
The soldiers began to push him to the front of the house.
“Take his weapons away,” Glen reminded them.
After they left the house, my eyes went back to Jack. A tear had rolled down his cheek and mixed with the blood on his face. I lifted my finger and knew that my sense of touch had returned. I felt so much more than a salty tear on my finger. I felt nothing else in the world but him.
4
Jack Scoville
F uck you.
I thought back to my response to Glen. The words continued to replay through my mind like a scratched CD. The words. Aimed at him. Aimed at Darren. The soldiers. The whole town. Even Father Ricky was feeling the wrath inside my corrupt mind. This kind man who was nothing but a servant to God would have to live with all of my hatred forever.
Look at our world. How was God anything but Satan in disguise? Father Ricky was only the devil’s follower.
Fuck them all.
I wasn’t sure what to make of Glen, but his hospitality continued. He removed the rest of the soldiers from the priest’s house and remained there without any protection from us.
“Come with me. I have a surprise for you,” he said to us.
He had arrived in a golf cart and asked if any of us were too hurt to walk. Again, the hospitality. When all of us declined his help, he decided to walk with us and left the golf cart behind.
He walked us down the streets of District 7-1. His demeanor was that of somebody who had created a cure for cancer. Because he had. From the looks of things, he had created a way to survive this deadly disease, this cancer of stragglers.
We walked by a restaurant which he explained was some of the best burgers he’s ever had. There was a barbershop, a grocery store—although we’d seen that before.
“We even have a sports bar,” he said proudly. “Although, I should think of a new name, shouldn’t I? Without sports anymore, my bartenders play old DVDs. It’s really a bar with movie night. I think tonight is Something About Mary.”
He looked back toward us. I don’t think anyone was really listening to him. “You should stop by later if you’d like to have a drink and meet some more of the neighbors, although, I’m sure you’re plenty exhausted. You should probably stay in and get some sleep.”
We turned a corner around a large tree. The grass smelled freshly cut. I hadn’t smelled that in years. That fresh scent didn’t travel through the streets of Chicago. We’d reached a street of houses. Beautiful houses. White fences lined the streets, sidewalks turned and lead up to the front of white houses, and blue houses, and even a small yellow ranch. It was a perfect little town.
It didn’t make any sense.
“I’m sure none of you were listening to me.” He was right. “But I chose my words carefully when I called the others neighbors.”
He stopped walking. I stopped, but Kylie bumped into me. She was amazed at the shape the District was in. Everything appeared to be brand new. First, I shot her a look for bumping into me, but I gave her a double take because her mouth was hanging open.
“Here we are,” Glen said sprightly.
“Where are we?” Haylea asked.
“Your home. Here,” he said. “And here.” He pointed to another grey one across the street.
“Home?” I asked.
“Sure. Of course, only if you want it to be. There is no force here. If you’d like to stay with us, these are your homes. If you’d like to leave, I am not going to stop you, but I do suggest you wait until tomorrow. Stay the night or the week. Get some rest and some food.”
Glen looked at me specifically for this.
“You need to rest. Get some food in you for a few days. Clean up. Get your strength back. But as I said, this is your home now, if you’d like it to be.”
“We’re not staying here,” I said.
“Jack,” Heather made her rare appearance into the conversation.
“Haylea,” I ignored her. “We are not staying here.”
She didn’t speak. She looked at the house with curiosity. She peered down the street back at the small town we had just strolled through.
“Haylea,” I said aggressively.
“You said there were others with you,” Glen interrupted. “Other friends and family, who were on the bus with you, right? They know where you are. They know you’re here.”
I saw Haylea look at Glen and really listen to what he was saying for the first time. Glen was good. He knew how to strike a chord. I guessed some sort of salesman in his former life. Or someone that was really good at convincing people to do his dirty work.
“If you leave now, they may very well come back looking for you. I won’t be able to tell them where you’ve gone. What will they think of us when their loved ones are missing? They’ll think we did something horrible.”
“You have,” I said.
“I can’t apologize enough on behalf of Darren. What he did was inexcusable. Those were not the orders he was given. I assure you that he will be dealt with. It will not happen again. I promise you that. You are safe here.”
“What is here? How did you do this?” I asked him.
“A lot of people came together. We rallied after the virus. We built this town and protected it. And we were only able to do that because we trusted each other.”
“You trust your Captain?”
“I did. And for a long time, it was good, but he made a horrible mistake. He broke that trust and he will be paying for it for as long as I know him.” Glen walked over to me and held up two keys. “You are safe here. Please stay. I will pray that your people are okay.”
“They’re fine,” Haylea said quickly. “They’re strong.”
“Then they will be coming to look for you. So, let’s help them by making sure you are here for them to find you.”
I still wasn’t sure
what to do. I no longer put myself first. I didn’t have that option. These people were a part of my life whether I wanted it or not. Now, I was actually glad to have them around. This place was too strange to have stumbled upon it alone.
As I decided to take the key, Haylea reached out and took them first.
“Of course, we will stay,” she said. “Thank you.”
“For a few days,” I spoke over her. “If nobody comes looking for us, we leave. Nobody stops us.”
“We are not going to stop you Jack, but I do believe you will change your mind after a few days at Esperanza.”
“Esperanza?” Heather asked.
“I thought this place was District 7-1,” I curiously said.
“It was. But after…after a while, we knew this place would be home for a long time. We wanted a homier name.”
Glen patted me on the shoulder and nodded to the rest of us. He only smiled at one of us and I think that is why Heather was involved in the conversation so much more than past discussions. This man was crushing on her.
“I will check on you later. Please, rest,” Glen said.
“Esperanza,” Haylea said.
“Esperanza,” Glen repeated.
“It’s a pretty name.”
“It’s Spanish. My late wife was from Spain. As hard as I tried to learn the language, I just couldn’t master it. But some things did stick.”
“I’m sorry to hear you lost your wife,” she said. “I’m Haylea.”
“It’s nice to meet you Haylea,” Glen said to her.
Some of the others had started to walk toward the house. I waited back for Haylea.
“Glen,” Haylea said stopping him from walking away yet again.
“Yes, Haylea.”
“What does it mean? Esperanza?”
“Hope,” he said. “It means hope.”
5
Scott Daugherty
H ave you ever met somebody and then mere seconds later completely forgot what that person’s name was? I mean their simple, unimportant name dropped out of your head like a rock that had never been there in the first place.
That used to happen to me all the time. I never knew what it was, why we constantly, as people, put ourselves above everyone else that we couldn’t even remember somebody’s name.
Now, it is one thing if you are at a party with a bunch of people you don’t know and have been drinking, but what about work? What about my job? I worked at a TV station with people whose brands were their very own name. Reporters and Anchors made a living off of smiling as wide as they could as they said their name.
And I still couldn’t remember any of their damn names. They weren’t important to me.
But now names were all we had. It was the most literal calling of who we were. We didn’t have jobs. Families had been torn apart and replaced by strangers. Bank accounts didn’t matter. Professional standing didn’t matter. When the only thing that bonded me to another person was the fact that we were all stuck in the same grizzly hell, I took it upon myself to get better at remembering names.
There also were far fewer names for me to remember. That helped. But I was also sleeping by these people, working by these people, and surviving by them. They were my only friends and family left in the world.
When Glen introduced himself, I said his name about a dozen times in my head with my chin bobbing up and down each time I repeated it mentally. I stared at him and with my past history, if anybody saw me doing it, they probably thought I was about to rape or murder the man. I just wanted to remember his name. He was going to be important. He just saved us from Kendrick after all.
While remembering the man’s name, I was also able to comprehend what he was actually doing. He gave the group keys to two different houses. They were right across the street from one another. He handed them over for free. No down payment. No mortgage. He just passed them off like he was handing over a couple of extra pieces of gum.
I watched all of their expressions as they took the keys. Haylea was the first one to reach for the keys and was happy to be getting them. She looked relieved and shocked all at the same time. We were going to be living in a fully functional house. We didn’t have to sleep on the ground anymore or bathe in the rain or a river. We weren’t living on a bus or in a cubicle. We were literally home.
I didn’t feel at home, though. How could I? How was I expected to be happy and live in an actual house a few feet down from people that I’d hurt? They weren’t going to let me sleep in the same house as Elyse or Emily. Haylea wouldn’t let me sleep under the same roof as her. Nobody wanted me. I was the outcasted member of the family, but I understood that. I dug my own grave with these people and I had accepted it long ago.
“Glen, could I speak to you?” I stepped over to him before he could leave.
“Hi…” He reached his hand out to me and paused for my name.
“Scott. Scott Daugherty.”
“Scott. Is everything alright?” He had one foot leading away from me. He was wanting to leave, but my request was too important not to ask.
“I don’t think that this is going to work for me,” I said. I pointed to both houses like a gameshow host.
“Really? Why not? I promise you they are very well kept. It’ll be like a home of your own.”
“No, I believe you and that isn’t the problem. It is…well…I don’t think it is a good idea that I stay in the house with the rest of the group. Either house. Either group.”
“Is everything alright?” He asked. He folded his arms. I knew this wasn’t going to be an easy sell.
I looked back to see that the group was discussing who was going to which house. They started to shuffle back and forth from one side to the other. Again, it didn’t matter how they divided themselves up. I wasn’t going to fit in with either of the houses right now. I still needed to take some time to reaffirm their belief in me.
“I’ve done some pretty bad things since the outbreak. Nothing that I am proud of. Actually, I regret everything I’ve done and it has undoubtedly rubbed most of my group the wrong way. All of them, actually. I just think it would be best if I had my own place to stay. If something is available, that is.”
He must not have been in a hurry after all. He nodded his head up and down and uncrossed his arms. He adjusted his belt and looked up and down the street. Was he thinking of a place to put me? Was he going along with it?
“Would you like to take a ride with me? I’ll show you a few things,” he said.
“Uhh, sure,” I responded.
“Alright. Great. Let’s go.” He waved me over to a golf cart that I could only guess was for him and for him only. It was the boss’s transportation. I still hadn’t seen how big District 7-1 was, but I assumed a golf cart could get around the entire perimeter in ten or fifteen minutes.
I hopped in with him and before either one of us was comfortably seated, he pushed the gas pedal and we were off. I had to grab onto one of the handlebars above me so I didn’t fall out. He laughed. It was a nice brisk air that morning and it hit me in the face and the cool flew up my nostrils.
“What did you do?” Glen asked as he kept his eyes on the road.
I wasn’t ready to divulge that information so soon into our relationship. I was hoping we’d at least have a nice five-minute stroll of small talk until we got down the block. Perhaps, I could even wait until we came to a stop so there was no chance of him pushing me out of the cart. The top speed wasn’t fast, but I still didn’t want to be thrown from a moving vehicle.
“What did I do?” I applied the conversational tactic of repeating the question to stall.
“Before the outbreak. What was your career?”
“Oh.” Oh. Good. “I was a building manager at WTIX. It is a news station in Indianapolis. I’ve been there for a couple of months.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yeah, I did. It wasn’t too complicated, but there were new problems, different things to do every day. I was good at it, too.”
“I have no doubts that you were.” We drove around a big circle that surrounded a park in the middle of the town. There were some people relaxing on the grass. A few children played on the playground. There were benches and a gazebo. It was the picture from a cheesy, perfect-little-town movie.
“Are you curious why I ask?” Glen continued.
“Small talk?”
“No. I’ve learned that small talk is all but dead in our new world. Everything we do should be with purpose. Every conversation. Every move. Nothing we do is by chance anymore. Nothing we do is to waste time or to fill up the silence. No, I ask because everybody was something in the old world. But do you know what happened?”
“No.” My eyes tightened.
“We changed. This world changed us. It changed everybody. Some changes are more drastic than others. From what you’ve said, yours might have been horribly drastic. My change has been small, but I have changed. However, this place allows us the opportunity to find our old selves. No matter how far we’ve gone,” he looked me dead in the eyes. “We can come back.”
“You’ve seen it? You’ve seen the worst of people come back?”
Glen nodded his head. We stopped the cart near the park and he sat back and relaxed. He rubbed his face and pulled at the neck of his shirt like he was wearing a tie. He cleared his throat and pointed to a man in the park.
“Do you see that man?” he asked.
I tried to find the man he was talking about, but there were many of them in the park. He squinted as he pointed as if that was going to help me locate the man.
“He’s the one over by the gazebo. Longer, black hair.”
Finally, I saw him. “Yeah, I see him.”
“That man’s name is Nico. I knew him before the outbreak. He was a great friend of my wife. They bonded over wine and art and things that I tried so desperately to take an interest in but didn’t have time for. My work kept me very busy. Nice was a great friend of hers.”
He took a deep breath and stared at the man with great interest. He continued, “That is the man that killed my wife.” I looked at him, but he watched Nico. “They had an evening out at one of those wine and board, or wine and painting—I still do this day don’t know exactly what type of event they had attended. There was alcohol, though.”
Dead Last, Vol. 3 Page 3