The Remaining

by Travis Thrasher

  “I think it’s okay,” Jack tells them.

  Tommy stands and looks over to Allison and Dan and Skylar. Several times in the night, he heard Skylar’s haggard breathing and her soft moans of pain. She’s made it this far, however. There’s hope for her.

  There’s hope for all of us. The sun brings that.

  They begin to file into the hallway and then climb upstairs around the debris of broken windows and cracked walls. Jack has to push open the door leading to the sanctuary. When Tommy follows him, he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

  There is something hypnotic and beautiful in the carnage that awaits them. The holes in the roof and walls of the church allow streaks of sunlight to crisscross throughout the shadows of the church. The pews are overturned and littered with glass and wood and plaster. What remains of the stained-glass windows have been melted from the outside, as if someone placed a blowtorch right next to them.

  Jack turns to them with horror on his face. “Don’t look up there,” he says.

  But Tommy glances at the front of the church and sees the body of Pastor Shay hanging upside down over the altar. Blood drips from his unrecognizable face. He resembles a garbage bag that was tossed and didn’t quite make the can. Nearby, the leather cover of the pastor’s Bible can be seen. Jack steps over it and kicks it, spilling out pages that are now simply ash. Tommy is reminded of what happened to Skylar’s Bible after she was attacked.

  The banner that hung on the wall with a Bible verse on it now is simply bits of cloth with words that have been shredded into the dust floating around them.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Jack tells them.

  Nobody says anything but continues walking. Not long ago the lifeless man hanging over the altar spoke to them about faith and hope. Now they pass him by like the wreckage in this room. Something broken and disposable that they’re leaving behind.

  A loud crash makes everybody jump. Tommy shields Allison from the sound, then realizes it was only a light fixture plummeting to the ground.

  It’s going to be nice to get out of here and breathe air that doesn’t have the stench of death connected to it.

  The group of survivors begins heading down the street in the direction of the bridge where the relief center is supposed to be. Tommy is torn between wanting to follow Pastor Shay’s instruction to lead them and his loyalty to his friends. In the end his friends win out, and the broken bridal party from Dan and Skylar’s wedding just stand and watch the others slowly disappear. The sun is up above and the clouds are gone. It actually feels like a normal day—if, of course, you were to forget about all the dead bodies and wreckage surrounding them.

  Skylar struggles to hang on to Dan’s and Jack’s shoulders for support. She barely made it out of the church. What’s going to happen on their trek to the hospital?

  “The hospital is just across the freeway,” Dan says. “There’s gotta be a doctor there or medicine.”

  “We need to go with the others to the relief center,” Jack says. “Shay told us to stick together.”

  “They’ve probably got medical supplies there,” Allison adds.

  “No. Rachel said she needs an antivenom. We’re going to the hospital.” Dan doesn’t just sound determined. He sounds like an angry, possessed man on a mission.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Skylar says in a voice Tommy can barely hear.

  Tommy takes Skylar for a moment while Dan and Jack continue to talk about what to do. Allison seems to have had it with her violet dress that’s already scraped and frayed at the bottom. She starts to rip it to shorten it and allow her to walk better.

  Glancing at Skylar, Tommy can see the shrunken cheeks and the loss of color. Everything that was bright and beautiful about Skylar twenty-four hours ago seems to be gone. She’s a shell that’s slowly starting to crack and dry up.

  She’s not going to be alive much longer.

  “We can make it to the relief center,” Jack says.

  “I’m not taking that chance. Skylar needs help now.”

  Two alpha males competing with each other when they really need to be working hand in hand.

  “Doesn’t the word relief spell help to you?” Jack asks.

  Dan looks red-faced and unlikely to budge. “You have no idea if there really is a relief center. We know there’s a hospital. We know there’s doctors and medicine there.”

  Dan takes Skylar back from Tommy and starts to guide her in the direction of the hospital, but Jack blocks his way.

  “Get out of my way,” Dan tells him.

  “No.”

  “Skylar’s dying right here. Do you understand that? I can’t lose her. She’s my wife.”

  “I’m not letting anyone else get hurt. Now let’s get going—”

  Dan immediately lets go of Skylar and rushes toward Jack and the two of them fall to the ground. Dan doesn’t know how to fight, so the scene is darkly comical as he tries to secure a choke hold on Jack’s neck but gets nowhere. Jack pops him in the head but doesn’t want to fight his friend.

  Tommy makes sure Skylar sits on the grass before intervening. He gets between his two friends and curses and shoves both of them away from each other. “Knock it off. Both of you. Dan’s right. We have to try the hospital. I’ll go with him. We’ll meet you at the relief center. Okay?”

  Jack looks at all of them. “No. We stay together. We’ll all go.”

  Allison looks sick, like she’s going to cry again.

  Tommy nods at her. “It’s going to be okay. We find medicine and then we’ll be on our way to the relief center.”

  Sam is nearby, waiting to see what happens.

  “You good with that?” Tommy asks her.

  “I’m okay,” Sam says.

  “Let’s get moving.”

  Every passing stranger either ignores them or stays away, scared of their group or maybe just slightly out of their mind as they should be. Everything around them carries scars, as if some giant wiped a mighty claw over everything and left shards and slivers behind. Streets are cracked, the cement crushed and fragmented. Buildings are half there, ransacked and abandoned and mostly reduced to rubble. Vehicles litter everything, from parking lots to grassy lawns to intersections. Everything is cluttered and discombobulated. Yet actual living, breathing souls are seldom seen.

  Maybe they’re all dead and everyone left has gone to the relief center.

  The sun bears down and Tommy sweats and feels a little more like his old self. This is his daily workout like he used to always have. Now all he has to do is go back to his apartment and back to his old routine and his old life. But those are all gone.

  Strange images come to his mind.

  The watch he had hoped to save up for all year to finally buy. The one he didn’t really need because who really actually looks at a watch for the time anymore anyway. The one that seems ridiculous now since he might as well be counting down the minutes and seconds himself since the end is not near, it’s here and it’s now.

  The job he didn’t get that gave him sleepless nights. The worry and the angst and the frustration. Like the watch, so meaningless.

  Then there’s the woman walking in front of him, the one walking in step with Jack. The girl he’s been in love with for a while, the one whom he finally told the truth to. The big revelation, only to result in a whole lot of nothing.

  You spend long moments worrying and wondering only to see them wash up on the shore of a sea of wasted hours. Only to see them stranded on the island of foolishness. He wants that time back. He wants that energy back.

  I want everything back. I want to redo so much I have no idea where to even start.

  He wipes his brow. Unbuttons his cuffs and rolls up his sleeves.

  They pass by a helicopter that’s on its side and split in half. It’s just another thing to notice and then leave behind.

  As they enter the shadows underneath the freeway ramp, Allison asks the question all of them are thinking.

  “What if nobody’
s at the hospital?”

  “Someone will be there,” Dan says as he continues to assist Skylar in their walk.

  Allie glances back at Tommy. He gives her the best smile he can muster.

  It’s not much, but it’s all he can offer her right now.

  44

  IN THIS TWILIGHT

  We sit and watch the sun start to nod off to sleep. Side by side on this swing, a small dog on my lap. The snug feelings of being overfed and overcomfortable and overloved. Holding his hand in mine. Just . . . being.

  A small house. Fixed up to perfection.

  A small lawn. Nothing too much.

  Small things to decorate the small tree of our life together.

  Small because we don’t need much. We just need each other.

  That’s all anybody needs, right?

  Right?

  Allison knows that was the dream once. This thing she held on to even after growing up and realizing that the small house with the picket fence doesn’t really exist. Yet still she has saved it for herself.

  Now, watching the weary world all around her, Allison knows the picket fences are forever gone. The whitewashed house on the corner with the little white dog and the white cabinets is a blinding mirage in a hot, searing desert. Nothing will ever be whitewashed again. Nothing.

  Come to me, child.

  She finally spots the entrance of the hospital, but all she can see is people leaving it. Cars and SUVs and ambulances litter the parking lot and the lawn. She notices a dead body that’s surely rotting in the hot sun strapped to a gurney right next to the ambulance it must have been carried in.

  Dan leads Skylar and the rest of them to the entrance. The sliding-glass doors are jammed open.

  “Think those things that attacked us are gone?” Sam asks.

  “They must be,” Tommy says.

  Dan turns to them. “Let’s hope there are still some doctors here or something.”

  But it’s obvious once they walk inside that it’s going to be a long shot.

  The reception area is empty. The place looks like everything else in this new world: ransacked and messy and overturned and out of sorts. Chairs are tossed on their sides. Bodies litter the floor. Glass covers the ground. The electricity is out, the lobby illuminated only by the sunlight.

  Dan is now carrying Skylar in his arms. “Let’s find her a room and lay her down.”

  They begin walking down a hallway that only gets darker the farther they get from the entrance. A pharmacy on their left is bare, its shelves picked clean. Some empty bottles are on the floor along with upside-down furniture. Jack jumps over the counter and begins to look through everything but there’s nothing to find.

  We made a mistake coming here.

  As they look for a room, they see a woman dressed in a nurse’s outfit helping a patient out.

  “Please—we need help. Anything you can do.”

  The woman doesn’t listen to Dan’s plea. “There’s no one left. We’re getting out. They’ve got supplies at the Cape Fear Bridge.”

  The nurse continues to walk with her patient.

  Everybody is leaving.

  We should’ve done the same.

  More bodies litter the floor and the rooms they pass. So many dead. So many lives just taken.

  And so many left behind in total and complete despair.

  Dan soon finds a room with light coming in through the windows. He gently places Skylar in the bed while Jack and Tommy look for any kind of medicine that might help her.

  Allison pulls up a chair beside the bed, stroking Skylar’s hair and trying to get some kind of response. But none comes.

  Tommy heads into another room but soon comes back and slams the door shut. “Looks like there’s nothing left.”

  “I’ll go floor to floor,” Jack says with a voice that sounds slightly out of breath. “Find her a doctor, something to help her.”

  They’ve gone from one prison to another.

  Allison holds Skylar’s lifeless hand. “You’re going to be okay, Sky.”

  “We’re going to beat this,” Jack says.

  But Allison knows the reality is that there’s nothing to beat. The game is over and the victor has been chosen. They’re merely spectators in the crowd trying to figure out how to get back home after watching the war unfold.

  Jack heads out of the room. Tommy waits for a moment, then tells them all to stay there. But before he can leave, Allison tells him to wait a moment. She stands and goes over to the doorway.

  “You’re right, you know,” she says.

  Tommy just looks at her, confused.

  “The first night we met. I still remember it too. You’re right—we did just click.”

  She gives him a hug and whispers to him to be careful. He gives her a caring, gentle smile. Then he’s gone.

  Allison knows it might be the last time she ever sees Tommy. Or Jack. Or both.

  Sometimes there is so much grief and terror that the well inside starts to overflow. And it’s all you can do to keep your head above water to breathe. There’s no thinking and no planning. There is just doing. You just keep doing what you need to do.

  And right now, what Allison needs to do is be there for Skylar. To help her dying friend before it’s too late.

  Allison and Sam sit against the wall watching the couple in the shadows. Dan can only hold Skylar’s unresponsive arm in his hands and watch her. The three of them—Dan, Allison, and Sam—are quiet while they wait for the guys to come back with any kind of hope. The formerly glowing bride is now pale and bloody and unconscious. They all know it’s just a matter of time.

  “I read somewhere that the light you see when you die is the brain releasing massive amounts of endorphins to ease the pain of death,” Sam says.

  “There are a lot of people who think that, but there are a lot of other people who think the light is a sign of God’s existence,” Allison replies.

  “Do you believe that?”

  She nods, thinking of the prayer she prayed this morning in the darkness of the church basement. Crying out for help and salvation in the pit. Asking, begging God to help them and save them. But no help or salvation came.

  But I still know God’s up there. He has to be.

  “I do. If these bad things exist out there, then surely there are good things. It all depends on how you look at it.”

  She feels something stirring inside her soul. The ticking clock, the kind that’s winding down just like Skylar’s life, can almost be heard. It’s following her like the violent fluttering of the demons.

  Allison knows there’s unfinished business between God and her. She just still doesn’t know what to say. Or how to say it. Or when to say everything.

  How do you finally come before your Maker after a life of running away from him?

  45

  DARKNESS

  It can feel and taste their fears, their anger, their questions. It also can see the bright light that tries to break these things. It’s attracted to that light to blot it out.

  There is the fighter named Jack, the doer. The one always leading, the one always ahead even though he doesn’t know where the path leads. He currently looks through empty drawers in empty rooms but it knows he will find nothing but the very thing residing in his heart and soul. Emptiness.

  Jack is with the other doer, the more reserved soul who watches and waits, the one named Tommy. The two of them continue room to room looking for hope, looking for answers, looking for salvation. They pass the chaplain’s office and see the chaplain dead at his desk.

  The dead don’t speak and don’t give answers because they’re long gone. Just like these two will be soon enough.

  They arrive at the cafeteria and Tommy asks Jack if he can smell the odor in the air. They open the door to find the stacks of bodies. Rotting, decaying bodies in a hot, dark hospital.

  It knows this is the end. This is the time for it and its kind to finally do anything and everything they want. To wreak havoc. To cause c
haos.

  It gets closer, watching, waiting.

  “Do you hear anything?” Tommy asks.

  It can see his fear, his frustrated soul that wants to do something but can’t. The anger. Oh, the anger in these two. Anger at the one who caused this. Anger at their Maker, the one they refuse to even acknowledge.

  It knows its Maker and knows its God and knows the pecking order. It knows where it will be eventually. But all it can do now is continue to hurt and harm and cause this kind of exquisite terror.

  “Shh!” Jack says.

  It watches them in the dark. They can’t see it but it can see them. Can feel them. It puts a hand so close as if to touch them. But not now. Soon but not now.

  The farther they get, the more terrified the two young men become. It delights knowing the slight sounds it makes result in this. Good. That’s what it wants.

  Soon there will be other business to attend to as well.

  “Come on,” Jack says. “Let’s keep looking.”

  They look, not knowing it follows them. It’s been trailing them for quite some time.

  It’s waiting until it’s time.

  It’s waiting until it can finally end their hopes once and for all.

  46

  GONE

  The two figures argue even while they die. They argue about the man between them. This man who didn’t do anything to be with them. This man who still hasn’t said a single bad thing about anyone.

  Dying.

  And one of them condemns the man in the middle, mocking him, ridiculing him, demanding something. Anything.

  But the other calls the ridiculing man a fool.

  “Don’t you fear God even though you’re about to die?”

  This is what the man tells the other.

  “We deserve to be on these crosses but this man doesn’t. He’s innocent.”

  Then he tells the dying man in the middle the only words he can utter.

  “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

  In between the darkness and the light, Skylar remembers this picture. This scene. It unfolds as if she were standing in front of the three hanging men on their crosses. She hears the words and knows she wants to be like the second thief. She wants to believe. She wants forgiveness.