by Barry Napier
“I’m not sure just yet,” Vance said.
Behind him, Greenbriar visibly shifted in his seat. I also noticed that Jeremy Watts was once again staring at the floor. For reasons I could not quite explain, I took this all to mean that Vance was lying to us and that everyone at the table knew it.
Kendra apparently picked up on it, too. She began to gently bounce the baby, as if he needed the extra comfort. “I hate to seem rude,” she said, “but is there a room I could use? I need to nurse the baby.”
“Of course,” Riley said. “I put your bags in the second to last room down the hall. There’s a small cot in there and a few blankets.”
“Thanks so much.”
“Yes, thank you all,” I said.
“No problem,” Vance said. “If you need anything just let me know. We usually all meet out here together for a brief dinner. Feel free to join us.”
“Absolutely,” I said, giving a wave and walking behind Kendra.
The moment I turned my back on them and started down the hallway, I felt their eyes at my back. Despite the feeling of welcome they were trying to give off, there was nothing warm or inviting about the sensation that slowly crawled up my spine.
16
“He’s lying about something,” I said after we were in the room with the door closed.
“I know,” Kendra said. “But what?”
“I don’t know.”
The room was small and made me regret ever leaving the Dunn home. There was a small cot, a miniature bookcase and a small set of steel drawers. No windows, and only dim lights. It felt very confined. I felt more like a prisoner than a guest.
Even walking down the hallway to get to the room, the entire place felt too closed in. I tried my best not to let my distrust of every other living person take control of my thoughts, but I couldn’t help it. These feelings made the entire little structure they had found here beneath the parking garage feel like a tomb that had gone uncovered for millions of years.
From what I could gather from the little bit of the hideout we had seen, the tiny complex had once been some sort of collection of offices. It was yet another thought that made me feel like a ghost, haunting a world that I barely remembered—a world that had moved on to some other place without me. The idea of any sort of work being done in these offices seemed surreal to me.
As it turned out, Kendra’s ruse turned out not to be completely dishonest. The baby was hungry and was more than content to nurse. He fed for a few minutes before falling to sleep while still latched on. Kendra swaddled him in one of our blankets and lay him down on the cot, using the one single pillow Vance and his people had provided as a buffer so he would not fall onto the floor.
“Do you think we should leave?” Kendra said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s something to consider. It’s not like we’d be hurting their feelings or anything. I think, all things considered, they’d understand the eat-and-run mentality.”
“That one guy kept staring at me. The bigger one.”
“Watts. I know. I noticed.”
I started looking through our bags. They were meager belongings, sure, but it was all we had. Our entire lives, in these scant few bags. From what I could tell, they had not been searched through and nothing had been taken.
“It sounds stupid, but I don’t feel safe here,” Kendra said. “Vance is lying about something and he’s either very bad at lying or doesn’t care enough to try very hard.”
“What do you think about his idea of trying to find out more about those nests?”
I asked the question timidly. I found myself growing more and more interested in them. But I knew Kendra did not like to dwell on dark and depressing things. It was hard to do, given the way the world had been for the last year and a half or so.
“I don’t want to think about those things,” she said. “God, why did we ever leave our house?”
“For this.” I pulled out the photo of the gate from what I hoped was some sort of Safe Zone and the slip of paper we had found on David Giuilano.
Kendra looked to the picture of the gate longingly and gently plucked it from my fingers. She smiled sleepily at the picture for a while and then handed it back to me.
“Why do you think someone took a picture of it?” she asked.
“I’ve been wondering about that myself. I would think it would be to get the picture out around survivors—to let them know that they do exist. That way, survivors know there is at least one place they can go for safety. Sort of like a weird Pony Express sort of thing. No phones or other means of communication, so it would make some sort of sense, I guess.”
“That’s a nice thought. If not a little naïve.”
“So what do you want to do about our current predicament?” I asked.
I felt like we were sliding into a conversational style that we often delved into without fully realizing it. It was almost childlike. I liked to think of it as the playful sort of dialogue that was shared between awkward teenagers on a third or fourth date.
“I think we should at least stay for dinner,” I answered. “Maybe then we’ll tell them that we just don’t think this place is for us. Do you think that’s okay?”
“I’m good with that.”
Ever since our third or fourth week together, I had started to very subtly craft my responses and questions to her in a way that had her making most of the decisions. I did this on purpose. She had a better head on her shoulders than I did, and I don’t mind admitting it. She had been through much more in the aftermath of the bombs and the creatures. Maybe that’s why she tended to make better decisions than I did. It had been her that had wished to stay at the Dunns’ house when we came across it. I had wanted to keep walking the roads, looking for something better.
Now, having discovered we could have easily come across one of the nests if we had stuck with my plan, she seemed smarter still.
There was a blanket folded to the end of the bed which she took off and spread out on the floor. She lay down on it, using her hand as a pillow. She looked over to me and gave me a come-here nod. She did this on occasion, especially when she was worried about something. I went to her and spooned her in a way that was mostly innocent. I was a device and nothing more; something to make her feel comfortable.
And that was fine with me. Still, every now and then, on those longer nights in the Dunn house, I’d had to break away early. I had not wanted her ever to sense that I might want something more—that she had become something more to me.
I placed my right arm around her and felt her relax at my touch.
“Not too bad for two days out, huh?” she asked. “We’ve already stumbled across military personnel and got lots of answers we’d been looking for.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Not bad.”
“You know...the Safe Zone would be best for the baby, too. I think it’s his best shot at a normal life. If we stay here with these people, there’s no certainty.”
“I know.”
But I couldn’t help but wonder just how much easier things were now that we knew more about the world. To me, it seemed like a better deal to be living all alone in the Dunn house, ignorant of these new problems and this new darkness on the face of the world.
With my arm draped across her, I thought of Watts. I wondered where he was within this little office complex. I wondered what sorts of things he might do to Kendra if given five minutes alone with her.
That thought stirred a protective anger in me that I had not felt since helping to birth Kendra’s baby. I kept it close to my heart as she dozed off. While she slept, I held her close and kept my eyes on the door.
I eventually nodded off, too.
I dreamed of Ma and the day she died. It was a recurring dream that was really just a cruel recollection of that terrible day.
In the dream, it all unspools like some abstract film. New York was under evacuation so I drove to Ma’s house and helped her pack. She was basically helpless, sick and weakene
d by the chemo she was undergoing for her breast cancer. We packed only her necessities and I wheeled her out into the chaotic streets, fighting her ancient wheelchair every step of the way. She needed a better one but her insurance company was doing everything they could to prevent sending a check out to help pay for it.
When I had her in the car, we’d made it only three blocks before traffic became too clogged to move. Then the gunfire had started somewhere up ahead. I also noticed the helicopters circling overhead. Somewhere towards Central Park, something exploded.
In the end, it was the wheelchair that had been the end of her. I could have afforded to get her a nicer one after the doctors told me she’d be in a weakened state. But I had put it at the end of my priorities list, assuming her health care insurance would finally pay up. A new wheelchair had been the last thing on my mind and that was why I had rushed through screaming crowds for twelve blocks, heading towards the buses the military had swarming in and out of New York City in an effort to help with the evacuation.
Someone came pinwheeling around the corner, half falling and half running. They collided with the wheelchair and knocked the wheelchair out of my hands. It tipped up, almost righted itself, but then someone else came rushing by and accidentally hit it. Ma went sprawling to the curb and rolled just slightly out into the street. I screamed after them but didn’t even have time to get the curse out before I watched the military Jeep come barreling through two cars, sparks flying from the metal-on-metal friction. The Jeep plastered two pedestrians, one thrown back into a cab, shattering the windshield. It then clipped the man that had just knocked Ma over and after that, it kept coming.
Ma looked up, confused, and the Jeep still did not stop. I moved, but not quickly enough. And in the dream, the end is always the same and it’s not too dissimilar to the dream people have where they feel like they are falling.
I never make it to her in the dream because I didn’t make it to her in time on that day. She had been killed just sixteen hours before most of New York City had been wiped from the earth by a nuclear warhead. In the dream, I see her caught under the wheel and, unable to stop it, I wish that the enormous and unspeakable creature the news reported as less than thirty miles away from the city would hurry the hell up and crush us all.
17
A knock at the door woke us up sometime later. My watch indicated that we had been napping for a little more than an hour.
The knock came again, quiet and polite.
“Yeah?” I said.
Riley’s voice answered from the other side of the door: “We’re having our dinner in about ten minutes if you’d like to join us.”
“Okay Thanks.”
I rolled over onto my back and looked to the ceiling. Kendra turned to face me and when she placed her hand on my chest, my heart started racing.
“Are we still telling them that we’re not staying?” she asked.
“I’d like to. It’s weird—the idea of company is sort of exciting but...I don’t know. There’s something off about these guys. Don’t you think?”
“Definitely.”
Our eyes locked for a moment, searching one another out for any signs of weakness or doubt. We looked at each other that way for at least ten seconds and it felt like a fire was scorching my mouth. That’s how badly I wanted to kiss her. So far, neither of us had attempted it. It would have been up to me to try it, for sure. Her disinterest in me for anything other than companionship was evident in a way that I can’t quite describe. It did not upset me in the least. In fact, if anything, it made me feel stronger.
Above us, on the cot against the wall, the baby started to make tiny crying noises.
“I’ve got to find a restroom,” I said. “I’ll take the baby and check his diaper.”
Kendra nodded as she sat up and stretched her back.
I picked up the baby, still half asleep and rolling his tiny head along my shoulder. I opened the door to find someone that could direct me to the nearest bathroom and nearly jumped back into the room. The man sitting along the wall directly in front of our door startled me so badly that I was slightly embarrassed.
He was a black man, dressed in a tattered shirt and filthy camo pants. He looked up to me with wild eyes, their whites almost opal. Since I had never seen him before, I assumed his identity. He smiled when I spoke it.
“Mike?”
“Yeah,” he said through the smile. “Craaazy Mike,” he added, to place emphasis.
“It’s nice to meet you.” But what I was really thinking was his sudden presence was a little creepy. I wondered how long he had been sitting there.
“Yeah, likewise,” he beamed.
A strange silence fell between us as Kendra stepped up behind me. Mike pulled at the scraggly beard on his chin and eyed us suspiciously.
“That’s a beautiful little baby,” Mike said.
His words ran together like syrup from a jug. I saw that his bottom lip had been badly injured. The more I looked at his face, the more apparent it became that he had suffered some sort of radiation poisoning within the last year. It was common, given the number of nukes that had been detonated on US soil. His skin looked to be peeling in some places. Though it was really no worse than when hands and feet get chapped and start to peel in cold weather, there was a sort of crustiness to it that made it slightly different.
“Thanks,” I said. “I need to get his diaper changed. I need to use the toilet, too. Is there a restroom or something?”
“Two doors past the pantry, where all the food is.”
I nodded, a little hesitant to turn my back on him. I sensed Kendra stepping out behind me, not wanting to be left alone with Mike. Whether he was legitimately crazy was debatable, but he sure did appear to be zoned out.
“You know,” Mike said, after we had put a few feet between him, “I won’t be here tomorrow, nope. That’s why I wanted to make sure I met you folks. They gonna make me go in there. In that damn dark place.”
We both turned. Even the baby seemed interested in what Mike had to say. Mike sat there on the floor, not bothering to look at us. He stared straight ahead,at our partially open door.
“What place?” Kara asked. And God, how I wish she hadn’t.
“In one of the Black Spots. One of the nests. Those storm cloud things... sprinkled along the roads like poison in a candy dish.”
I knew right away that Kendra was going to carry the conversation out. She looked appalled that Mike had so passively accepted his fate—whether it was legitimate or not. She was also the sort of women for which the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” had been coined.
“They can’t make you,” Kendra said.
“No, I guess not. But there’s no use trying to fight.”
“Then why are you staying here with them?”
Mike considered her question for a moment and then looked at us with a huge shining smile on his face. I thought briefly of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. I saw that whatever radiation he had been exposed to had taken root in his mouth, too. His gums were blistered in places and he was missing several teeth.
“I would’ve starved if Vance, Riley, and Watts hadn’t saved me,” Mike finally answered. “I would’ve died on the side of the road. It was a few days after I came out of the nest.”
“What are they?” I asked, unable to stop the question. I couldn’t help it, though; I sensed that we’d get a more honest answer from Mike. While he did in fact have the weight of instability around him, there was a clarity to his eyes that spoke of honesty. I didn’t doubt that it would be the same sort of unfiltered honesty that would come from a five year-old.
“Don’t know,” Mike said. “It’s like a pit with no end. Dark everywhere. I saw things that I know now weren’t real. People I knew that were dead. Monsters. Not the things that showed up last year and caused all the bombings, though...just crazy weird things people only see in their nightmares.”
“And you’re willing to go back into that just to have
a place to stay and be fed?” Kendra asked
“No,” Mike said.
“Then why?”
Mike looked up and down the hall, checking to make sure that we were alone. When he saw the coast was clear, he leaned towards us. I couldn’t help but lean towards him as well. When I did, the baby reached a tiny hand out towards Mike, grasping at the air.
“Because in all that dark, there was something else, too. I don’t know what...but something important. Sort of like knowing the answer to something but it won’t come to you, you know? I was scared out of my mind, sure, but...there was something else in there that I knew might be worth it. We don’t even realize that there’s light until we’re pitched into the dark, you know? How would we know about God without the Devil to compare Him to?”
I only nodded. I placed my arm around Kendra and urged her away from Mike, towards the restrooms.
“The world is all dirt and cold now,” Mike said somewhat poetically. “But I think there’s something in the nests that’s the opposite. Somewhere in there, I think, is the last warm place.”
He was starting dead ahead now, unblinking. He’s apparently gotten snagged on his thoughts and was unable to free himself. As Kendra and I took a few steps away from him, still sitting with his back against the wall, another door along the hallway opened behind us.
We turned to see Greenbriar coming out of his room. He looked to us and said nothing, though a confused look passed over his face for just a moment. I saw alarm there as well, but it was gone just as soon as it appeared. He seemed to be more interested in Mike than Kendra and I.
“Hey, Mike,” Greenbriar said. He then waved to us and headed off towards the conference room.
“Oops,” Mike said when Greenbriar left. He chuckled and started picking at his beard again. “Can’t say no more. Nope. See you folks at dinner.”
He then stood to his feet and walked by us, walking in the same direction Greenbriar had gone.