Atlas (Apocalyptic Cries Book 1)

by Adalie Jordin

  She’s not even in the dorm anymore as far as I can tell.

  What the hell, Mom?

  Pushing myself up off the floor, I give Commander Nyler a wide berth. “I need to go see to my brother now. Someone has to tell him what happened, and I don’t think that someone will be my mother.” Edging past his bulky frame, I slip out the door. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  Taking off down the hall in the direction of the infirmary, I wait until I hear Nyler’s feet stalk down the hall in the opposite direction before I flip around. Briefly ducking back into the dorm to grab my backpack I trail along behind him at a distance.

  If he’s going to speak to Atlas about what he heard in our dorm, I want to be there for the aftermath.

  Not that they need to know I’ll be listening of course.

  This is where the hunting skills my PaPa taught me as a girl will come in quite handy. I can be completely invisible, and altogether silent if I choose to be.

  Let’s find out what these bastards know.

  ◆◆◆

  Nyler doesn’t take the usual path to Atlas’s meeting rooms in the campus faculty building like I assumed he would. Instead I find myself shadowing him deep into the back halls of the gymnasium.

  When he reaches a large door I’ve never noticed before, at the end of a particularly dark hallway, I drop down behind some random junk to keep out of sight, peeking around the edge. The door itself is metal, steel maybe, and it’s partially obscured by a rack of basketballs that look deliberately placed.

  What is this… some crime movie shit? If I weren’t so emotionally wrought from the day, and trying to remain hidden, I might laugh at the absurdity of it all.

  Commander Nyler swiftly glances back and forth to check if anyone’s around. Seeing no one - yeah, I’m good - he types in a code on the digital keypad that’s adhered to the wall beside the door. When the device flashes a little green light, locks tumble loose inside - lots of them - and Nyler swings open the steel barrier, causing it to creak and groan in protest.

  Even straining my eyes as hard as I’m able, I can’t make out what’s beyond the entryway. It looks like a pitch-black nothingness has reached out to swallow Commander Nyler whole.

  Logically, I know that’s not the case, but I can’t stop the disappointment from forming in my gut as I realize I have no chance of following him from here. Not presently anyway.

  Even if I had seen the digits he pressed into the pad, I would never make it past that old rusty fuck of a door no matter how hard I tried.

  Resolved to return later on, when I’ve dealt with everything else taking up space in my life at the moment, I stealthily make my way back to a more populated area of the campus, unnoticed.

  CHAPTER 3

  I stop back by my family’s dorm, hoping to settle things with Mom, but end up with frustration and sadness warring within me when I see she hasn’t returned. She hadn’t even given me the chance to tell her my efforts of today weren’t entirely in vain. Dad didn’t sacrifice himself for nothing.

  That’s how I need to keep viewing the situation, anyway, if I don’t want to end up having a total mental breakdown. Later on, when I’m alone, I have no doubt the dam will bust with uninhibited force. A person can only bottle things up for so long.

  Jeremy.

  His name is like a balm to my wounded soul. I miss him. I need to tell him, like I did with Mom, about Dad. I can only hope he doesn’t hate me after.

  The infirmary is about a ten-minute walk from the housing units, and by the time I reach the steps my stomach is making an atrocious growling. I don’t recall the last time I ate… Yesterday at early dinner, maybe? I’ll have to sort it out later.

  Everything is a ‘later’ issue right now.

  I can hear the occupants of the infirmary before I see them, and as I stride past the reception area, it quickly becomes apparent where all the noise is stemming from. Someone has set up a gaming system along the far wall of the room, and Jeremy, along with another boy around his age, are smack-talking each other’s skills as they duke it out on an old Mario game.

  Turning at the sound of my boots clipping down the center aisle, Jeremy gives me one of his biggest grins. Tossing the controller to the side, he tells his buddy he’ll be back and runs to wrap his skinny arms around my waist.

  At seven, he’s still rather small in stature compared to other kid’s I’ve met, but he makes up for it in personality.

  Jeremy was a midlife baby for mom and dad…. By the time he came around I was already spending most of my days studying to try out for the Freshman debate team in high school.

  To say I didn’t want anything to do with a baby in the house is a complete understatement.

  Most of Mom’s pregnancy, I refused to so much as look her way when we were forced to be in the same room together. I was pissed they thought having another baby was the solution to their marital issues.

  When is it ever though?

  Point in fact, before mom even strolled into her third trimester, Dad was already living out of a hotel in D.C. just to avoid her raging mood swings.

  I wasn’t so lucky. It wasn’t like I could just up and move out at thirteen.

  I mean, emancipation was an option, but I would have needed the courts approval for it to be possible, and I fully believed Dad would pull rank and sweep any efforts I made to extricate myself from the family away entirely.

  If I’m being honest, my Mom and I were never that close to begin with, no matter how much I wished otherwise. She loved me of course, and doted on me throughout my younger years, but as I grew older and started to develop into a young woman, it was almost as if she became jealous of me.

  That’s not arrogance, or ego, speaking… simply observable fact.

  She wasn’t blatant in her disregard, but I’d catch her watching me some days with a dislike so deep in her gaze that I’d wonder when her top would explode and we’d hash things out once and for all.

  After Jeremy’s birth though things changed, not much, but enough.

  Mom’s placenta ruptured and she had to be rushed into emergency surgery at thirty weeks along… We’d never even known something was wrong prior to that. The doctors said sometimes that happened in cases involving Placenta Previa.

  In the days to follow, Mom and I formed a far more civil bond than we’d ever experienced before as we watched Jer fight for his little life. First in the NICU, and then later when he came home but still had to have daily antibiotic injections and an oxygen tank to help him breathe.

  It wasn’t the ideal relationship, but we tried.

  Centering back in the present, I press a kiss into Jer’s strawberry-blond hair, barely missing getting head-butted in the process as he tries to keep his friend from seeing. “Hey, little bro. I’m glad to see you up and about!! Are you feeling okay today?”

  Rolling his eyes, Jer shrugs. “Not better or worse than yesterday.” Releasing me, he side-steps to look behind me. “Did Mom come with you? She promised she’d visit today if she didn’t get too busy. She had to leave early yesterday and then it was too late for her to come back.”

  Internally, my heart bleeds, but outwardly I pull a ‘what’re you gonna do about it’ look and shake my head. “I saw her for a bit, but she said she had some things to do.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. But Jer, there’s something I need to talk to you about, and it’s… it’s not going to be easy to hear. Do you think you can come to the office with me for a bit while your friend stays here?”

  I’d debated on the way over here if I was indeed going to be the one to tell Jeremy about Dad. Even though I’d said I would to Commander Nyler, internally I argued over it with myself. Now though, I know I have to. Mom has been distancing herself from us all, it appears, and I’m not sure she has the mental fortitude to handle this situation right now anyway.

  Walking over to the nurse’s station in the corner of the infirmary, I make sure Nurse Nance, the head of the infirmary, isn’t anyw
here around and guide Jer inside, closing the door quietly behind us.

  Before I even have time to suggest we sit, Jer’s already speaking in a defeated tone. “It’s Daddy, isn’t it? Something happened to him?”

  How could he possibly know that?

  I blanch, “I… wha— Jer, what makes you ask that?”

  Jeremy is standing with his arms wrapped around himself in a closed off way. His carefree, boyish, expression is nowhere to be found, and in that moment I know he’s seen more and heard more since the Outbreak than I’ve given him credit for.

  “Jer…”

  “I pay attention, okay?” He slumps down into one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs along the wall, just inside the door. “I knew you were planning a run to find me medicine.” How did he -- “I didn’t want you to get hurt for me so I told Daddy. He told me he’d take care of you. I… when you came in, and when you hugged me, your eyes weren’t as bright as normal. My hugs always make you brighter.” Tears well in his eyes and I have to fight off my own — have to be strong. “I just know on the inside, right here,” his little fists beat lightly over his heart.

  “Tell me, Sissy,” he pleads, using a nickname I haven’t heard in the longest time, “Daddy’s not coming back, is he?”

  Sitting down in the seat next to him, I pull him onto my lap, cradling him close. He’s lanky. and it’s awkward, but I hug him as tightly as I dare as his tears spill over and onto my shirt, mixing with my own. “No, Jer-bear, I’m so sorry. Daddy isn’t coming home. He saved me, and he isn’t coming home.”

  I hold him for a long time as sobs wrack through him, and eventually, he starts to relax into my arms, emotional exhaustion winning out over the stress of my revelation. When I look down at him, his tear streaked face is slack with sleep.

  I sit there, absorbing his warmth into my chilled bones, until I can’t take my stomach growling any longer. Hooking his legs up over my right arm, his head on my shoulder, I cradle him to me as I walk back through the infirmary to the bed assigned to him. Laying him down gently, I brush sweat-stained hair from his forehead and whisper in his ear, “I love you so much, little brother. Daddy did, too….”

  Hiccupping as I cover his legs with a borrowed blanket, I croak out one more, “I’m sorry,” before leaving the room as quickly and quietly as possible, not even sparing his friend, who’d remained lost in his own gaming world throughout our entire exchange, a glance as I went.

  I still had the insulin in my pack, but it wasn’t the time to bring it up. He didn’t need a shot right now, as far as I could tell, and I wasn’t going to wake him to share the news I had meds for him.

  That would be cold and insensitive to the core after the last hour.

  Not bothering to look for my mother again, I force my feet to the cafeteria, silently slipping by other Compound residents like I don’t exist. Which to them, I guess I don’t — unless they need something.

  Cynicism, thy name is Saedie.

  After grabbing a can of peaches and a plastic cup of filtered water, I take my small meal to the one place I consider wholly mine here, far from the droll of the rest of The Compound.

  I’d found it a few days after we moved in, while exploring campus, and I love it. The University used to have an Astrology major which, thanks to several massive donations from a couple of names forever tacked onto a plaque outside, had a state-of-the-art observatory building built a few years back. Adequately dubbed ‘The Space Station’. Now, though, it’s decrepit and unused by anyone other than me — as far as I know.

  The building is circular and comprised of only a single-entry hallway, which has his-and-her bathrooms that - wonder of wonders - actually have a single working toilet on the men’s side. No showers though.

  Beyond the initial corridor, through a set of steel double doors, is the Observatory itself. Round, with a huge white screen to the left of the doors, there’s a projection station at the back of the room, and a podium in the center aisle of two equal sides of theatre-like seating. The roof, dropping in about four feet from the perimeter, has an ornate glass dome. Used for viewing the stars at night, at one point in time it had functioning covers that slid in and out of place to darken the room for cinematic viewings on the giant screen. They’re permanently open now, and I like it that way.

  After hiding the backpack on a shelf at the control bench in the back, I sit down in one of the closest cushioned red fold-able seats to eat, propping my boot clad feet up on the row in front of me. Popping the top off the peach can, I dump a few pieces straight from the container and into my mouth. I’ve never been good at table etiquette, and right now I just didn’t care.

  Dad’s face flashes before my eyes again as I sit in the silence, causing a peach to lodge uncomfortably in my tight throat for a few seconds before I wash it down with a gulp of water.

  Today has been one of the worst of my existence, and I’m done. Done with the guilt beating down on me so hard I feel like my insides will crack under the pressure. With feeling like scum under my mother’s high-class sneakers. Done with the pain…. So. Fucking. Done. I just lost the one man in my life who, now I realize too late, was the only one who ever truly cared about me.

  Mom doesn’t.

  I may have fooled myself into a false sense of camaraderie with her where Jeremy is concerned, but her lack of care for my wellbeing in the middle of this emotional crisis just proves to me she never truly - deeply - loved me like a mother should.

  I just hope Jeremy doesn’t start to feel the same distance trickle down to him while Mom tries to cope with our Dad no longer walking this earth.

  Not alive anyway.

  Some people have speculated Zerk bites are capable of re-animating the dead, though it’s never been proven. I don’t want to believe something so heinous could be happening to my father, somewhere out there in the city right this very moment, so I dismiss the thought entirely.

  Poof. Gone. If only it worked like that.

  Still, knowing the curfew bell will be ringing within the hour, I make the uncharacteristic choice to be selfish. I need to allow myself some time to grieve — alone. It’s probably best if I bunk down in the observatory for the night regardless, with how unstable things are at home. I can’t convince myself to step through the threshold of a place I’m not wanted, and that’s how this whole situation seems right now.

  It’s not like there’s anyone to notice I’m not around anyway, since Mom bolted.

  Walking back over to my favorite row of seats, directly in the center of the right section, I pull up the adjustable cup holders between two of the cushions and recline the seat backs until they’re all the way flat. It’ll do. Pulling out a blanket from where I’d stashed it under the seats a while back, I drape it across my shoulders and allow the sun’s warm rays to lull me into an exhausted sleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  Over the next several weeks, I try my best to push through the grief of losing Dad. I make sure Jeremy, and only Jeremy, receives the insulin that cost us both so much. He’s been doing really well lately, considering. I say ‘only Jeremy’ because Nurse Nance and Commander Nyler tried to commandeer the meds for their own gain, thinking they could manhandle me into working off the debt of earning the dosages Jeremy required.

  Fuck. No.

  After not letting up on them, actively persistent to the point of being annoying, Nyler caved but made it seem like he was the savior in the situation. Further proving him to be the egomaniac I pegged him as from the beginning. It made me want to head back to that door and figure out what he’s up to, but I couldn’t motivate myself to do it yet.

  A few days ago, I convinced one of Commander Nyler’s lackeys to give me access to The Compound’s training area early in the mornings, before everyone else stirs for the day. I had to promise him a date in the near future, but I honestly don’t give a shit. I’d agree to almost anything if I can find a way to not feel weak any longer.

  Thoughts like, if I’d only known how to fight, or h
ad been better prepared physically, stuck to me like glue.

  If I could’ve run faster… been more dexterous, or even just not as scatter-brained. Maybe then things with Dad wouldn’t have happened how they did. Maybe I wouldn’t be the reason he’s dead.

  I won’t be that reason for anyone else.

  I refuse.

  So that’s why now, a month after his death, I’m up before the bum-crack of dawn, sweating my ass off in a smelly underground gym. Alone and pissed.

  Why pissed? Because I just heard through the grapevine that my absentee of a mother is going on a date tonight with Commander Nyler, mere weeks after the death of her husband. It seems the fact that she just gave birth to the last child he’ll ever father hasn’t deterred Nyler or her ambitions of stomping all over my Dad’s memory one bit.

  To top things off, I haven’t even met my new little sister. I don’t know her name, and I have no clue what she looks like. If she takes after Dad or has Mom’s coloring instead, I couldn’t say. I only know she’s a girl because they played the Fur Elise over the campus intercom on the day she was born, instead of Ode to Joy like they did for the little boy that was born a few days after we got here. They’re the only two babies, so it wasn’t hard to figure out.

  The morning after the incident, when I went back to the dorm to see if Mom was ready to talk yet, I’d arrived to find a wrinkled note stuck to the notice board beside our door. It read:

  Saedie, I can’t bear the thought of looking at you after what you’ve done. Your selfishness knows no bounds. Do not darken my doorstep again, for I no longer have a daughter in you.

  Dead serious… that’s how my forty-four-year-old, grown-ass mother, delivered the news that I’m no longer part of our family. She gave me no chance to explain myself — no opportunity to share with her the fact that my mistakes of that night weren’t all spent in vain. I’d torn down the paper and ripped it to shreds, leaving the pieces on the floor outside her door, much like my heart.