by Keys, Logan
His inner narrative was almost like a companion answering him, Oh now, NOW you want to think? Kentucky had spent the months since being overseas forcing his brain to stop thinking. To stop inundating him with an endless stream of gore and death.
To stop keeping him up at night with a Guard Duty mentality.
And since he’d had no medication for more than a few days, he was starting to see just how much it had helped keep it all at bay.
“Fine,” he said, laying back on the sub, vertigo spinning him like he was drunk beneath a hazy, gray sky. “Fine,” he groaned again, letting it all come to swallow him whole for once.
The bayou faded…And then it was smoke. And then it was desert; the sun was closer and on fire—its normal sunny self. Kentucky wasn’t on the sub any longer, but in another time. In a truck between a dozen other trucks, creeping at a safe pace when that seemed to also be just as dangerous.
Every so often they stopped in the village and checked a house that seemed suspicious. Most exited the trucks as quickly as they could, well aware that they were sitting ducks. The armored vehicles killed more than they saved. On foot was good, smaller targets and all that. On a roof, far better.
But for now, they were following orders like good little soldiers. And he was in the truck, hot, sweat-soaked, beads of it burning his eyes, talking to Lieutenant Shank.
They were joking about something simple. Something benign.
Something like home and peace and easy nights with a head on a pillow. If the war didn’t make a hippie out of them one and all by the time it was done, then you weren’t really paying attention. You could be patriotic and still pray for peace.
It’s almost like they’d asked for it even speaking of such niceties.
Someone yelled a warning. He never could remember who. The gunner? No, this was closer. His friend Martinez to his left? No, it was a deeper far more outspoken voice. But who?
He didn’t question it, just ducked down. Hugged his knees like he was in a crashing plane.
Maybe no one had ever yelled a warning. Maybe it was his guardian angel.
Incoming! Was the tone no matter the words. It was like a sound ripping across the entire world as far as Kentucky was concerned.
Before he even understood “RPG,” the loud noise erupted in the front of the truck and Kentucky was thrown to the floor. When he next looked there wasn't much left of the officer, but Kentucky didn't take the time to be sure. He was flinging the door open, and Martinez did the same on his side of the vehicle.
Protocol was to stay inside the truck, but protocol had been killing a lot of good soldiers. Kentucky was on his feet and moving around the rear, not bothering to even check to see if he was hurt. His eyes scanned the houses, trying to find insurgents. He raised his M4 carbine but barely took ten steps in total before another explosion rocked the truck in front of him and behind.
And then it was like it would never end.
Kentucky was thrown onto his side, ears ringing, though clear-headed enough to know he had to move.
The allied parties to the rear were lost in the smoke and confusion and they had begun to fire randomly into the melee without prejudice.
He longed to shout for them to stop, but no one would hear him. Martinez was in his line of sight. Dragging his friend along with him, he scuttled like a crab back towards the truck. “You okay?”
He couldn’t hear the answer.
Martinez was covered in blood, his wide eyes darting wildly. Kentucky helped him press a hand to his neck where the worst wound appeared to be. He’d have to find a medic to handle this properly, and he knew one was in the truck to his rear.
“Keep pressure! I’ll be right back!”
He watched in horror as the truck in front of them erupted in flames. He crawled toward it, hearing the screams and smelling the burning flesh, but even as he tried to cross, the deadly rain of bullets kept him from helping the ones who were trapped inside as the truck flared up in a ball of flaming fury.
The heat felt as if it melted Kentucky’s face off. He rolled into a protective huddle, crying out, but when he touched his skin, it was still there.
He moved back from the truck, quieter now since the screams had cut off, and Kentucky returned to his own truck before crouching alongside so that he could move towards the rear.
There was no one near the vehicle behind his own. The doors were open, but it was empty.
Kentucky peered inside blinking, until gunfire rattled the metal forcing him to the ground.
Right elbow then left, knees splayed out like a frog, he slid on his belly underneath his own truck. “Dammit!” he grunted. “Stop shooting!” he shouted, knowing no one could hear him.
Boots ran past the truck; a couple of soldiers were cut down by the rain of fire.
Kentucky cursed and grabbed Martinez’s jacket, but his friend’s head rolled back on his neck. When he faced Kentucky, his brown eyes were unfocused, his chest still.
It took long moments to accept he was gone.
Kentucky tried to find space for CPR but could see the blood loss was the main issue. His friend was gone. Truly.
The road they’d been on was on an incline, so from his place underneath the truck he could see down the hill, as more enemies made their way up.
He lifted his weapon and fired a few rounds, making puffs of dust due to the poor angle until he hit one, two, then three of the insurgents before they finally sought cover and retreated.
It worked…for a while. Every so often he’d feel himself lull and grow tired as adrenaline faded, but then more would try to come up the hill.
Lucky for him, the allies still occasionally and randomly fired from their place farther up the hill.
It was quiet for a while, an hour at least. “Anyone coming?” Kentucky shouted, but no one replied.
“You almost out?” someone faintly called from several trucks over.
Kentucky grunted before looking and dreading what he’d find. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s ammo in my truck,” he added more quietly, unsure if they’d heard.
“How many of us are left?” Kentucky yelled.
“Two over here, and…” The voice faded. “Two,” they said more surely.
“One down here!” a woman called, but Kentucky couldn’t see her.
He realized it was growing dark. He’d have to get the ammo soon.
Crawling out from under the truck, he had to watch his back and his front. He made it into the truck’s rear passenger side, but as soon as he did, more bullets peppered the vehicle. He had to lay on his side on the floor bed, his body getting cut by the ripped-up metal, while he covered his head, praying that this wasn’t the end of his road.
“Where are they?” he demanded, hoping the others could see.
“It’s from up the hill. I think our backup has turned, amigo,” someone answered.
“You guys okay?” Kentucky asked, realizing the guy was out of breath.
No one answered.
The gunfire paused so he grabbed ammo, water, and two MREs that he could find in a rush. Rolling out of the door and onto the ground, he returned to his place next to Martinez.
By the middle of the night there were only two left—the woman had gone silent, too.
It's just us, Kentucky thought, sliding the second MRE to the truck next to his where Foster, the other survivor, had crawled to reach him.
Kevin Foster, he’d said, a Specialist with a lisp. “Mom’s gonna kill me if I get killed,” he said, and Kentucky smiled.
“Mine, too.”
It was three days of them risking it all to grab ammo and food from each truck that wasn’t burned out. The smell of the bodies stung their noses every breath, and the MREs kept them from starving.
“Water?” Foster asked.
“I got a few sips left and that’s it.”
He went to throw the canister, but Foster waved him away. “You keep it.”
Foster crawled out that night to find more and ne
ver came back.
Kentucky was alone, pinned down, and he’d run out of supplies.
8
The old orchards of Southern California
Clive regretted the Cheetos. He had wicked heartburn these days, and though he wouldn’t admit it, he was suffering. “She awake?” he asked a guy he couldn’t remember the name of who’d just come out from where the sleeping bunks were.
The guy shrugged and didn’t answer.
Clive rubbed his sternum where the usual burn sizzled there like an old comfort as if to say, “You thought you’d catch a break during the apocalypse, buddy?” His body wasn’t going to be twenty years old again, though he needed it.
The layout was as follows: There was one large main room where they ate and collectively stood around without enough seats. Then there was a storage room, three bedrooms splitting from it, and two bathrooms which were almost always full. Clive did a head count but noticed Keith was missing.
Warning bells immediately went off in his head. Clive practically ran towards the bedroom he knew Siri was in, flinging open the door to find Keith pinning her up against the wall, hands around her throat. “Where is it!” the drifter screamed, but Siri couldn’t answer.
She shook her head, flinging her glasses off, her eyes wide, pleading. They darted to Clive, and he saw red.
Clive didn’t even feel himself moving. He had Keith by the scruff of his neck and then by the throat up against the wall in an instant. “You mind telling me what in the hell you were doing?”
But Keith couldn't answer, either. His eyes bugged out of his head, and they glared at Clive, but Clive wasn't done yet.
Siri was trying to pull him away, but Clive barely felt her. She may as well have been a butterfly on his arm. All the frustration since the end of the world, all of that worry about his family, it had to come out somewhere, and it was coming out right now.
“You might be spending your last moments on earth, boy, and this is how you choose to spend it? Beating up an innocent girl?”
Siri redoubled her efforts, putting her mouth close to his ear and screaming, “Let him go!”
“Drop him, Clive!” Clive heard a round being chambered, and he glanced over to find the hippie there brandishing his weapon. “You heard me.”
“Stop!” Siri’s tearful face swung between the three men, swimming in his peripheral.
More than the shotgun, it was the only thing that got him to drop Keith like a sack of potatoes to the ground. The boy gripped his throat, breathing in and out desperately, acting like he was dying.
“You’re all right,” Clive said, kicking the kid in the legs. “Get up.”
But Lila was there now, her eyes cold daggers. “Leave him alone, Clive,” she said with acid.
She distracted Clive just enough that he missed the kid rising and swinging.
The punch clipped Clive in the side of his head, and then Keith tackled him. As they went down together, the kid got another punch in, snapping Clive’s head back so hard he saw stars.
Clive’s nose burned but wasn’t broken, he didn’t think. His retaliation was overkill upon hindsight’s inspection, because he shoved the drifter into the wall hard enough that there was a thud, and all was silent.
He didn’t care if the kid was breathing, but Lila and her husband made sure he still was before rounding on Clive.
He’d gotten to his feet and was trying to stop the bleeding from his nose. Siri made a strangled noise and took her sweater off, forcing it under the flow of red, telling him to lean his head forward. “It’s supposed to be lean back,” he said, his voice muffled.
“No,” Siri said, forcing his forehead down. “It’s forward. Then you don’t swallow the blood. It will make you sick.”
Clive leaned his head back anyway.
“Suit yourself,” she said.
Clive waved her off, his eyes locked on Lila. Her husband may have had the gun, but she was the one calling the shots.
“We planned for this,” Lila said, and she motioned to her husband. “Cuff him.”
Clive froze as Daniel pulled handcuffs from his pocket. “We knew there might be trouble with some people in here. With so many, it was inevitable. So you have to be locked up until we can decide what we are going to do.”
Siri lunged between them, her voice as firm as he’d ever heard it. “You will not, Daniel.”
“Sorry,” Lila said taking Siri by the shoulders.
Clive was shocked, to be sure, but then it dawned on him. “What about the kid? He was attacking her!”
Daniel and Lila hadn’t seen it. Siri glanced at the floor. She wasn’t going to say what happened. Clive felt rage and fear shoot through him. Daniel was already moving to slap cuffs in place. If they locked up Clive and not Keith, what would happen to Siri?
“No way. Not happening.” He braced himself for a fight.
Daniel watched Clive carefully, then checked with his wife. She nodded a short bob of her chin and Daniel lifted his gun.
The room erupted with gasps of all who’d come to see what the fight was about.
“No!” Siri cried, leaping in front of the shotgun.
Clive grabbed her and firmly put her behind him.
“Please. Stop.” He felt her try to push past him, until she moved to his side. “Fine! Wait! We take our chances outside,” she shouted.
“What?” everyone said at the same time.
“We leave.” Siri glanced at Clive who pointed at Keith.
The drifter was finally awake. “He should be the one leaving,” Clive said.
But Lila and Daniel weren’t going to be moved. They were waiting for him to be cuffed and locked up.
When he saw every ending as a bad one, he said, “Okay. Let’s go.”
Siri’s mouth dropped open in surprise that he agreed with her crazy idea.
“I said, let’s go!” he thundered as he brushed harshly past both Lila and Daniel. His adrenaline pushed the blood up into his head, making him dizzy.
“Grab a mask,” he told Siri, daring them to argue with him.
They had at least five. Clive grabbed a second one. He prayed they would work, though no one had tested them yet. “Thanks for nothing,” he growled at Lila, pulling it over his face.
“Open that door,” he said through the mouthpiece. His voice was muffled.
“Clive,” Lila said, finally realizing he was serious. “Siri…?”
Siri gave her friend one last look before pulling on her mask and looking away.
"Open it.”
It wasn't going to ever be forgotten. They’d walk out. Together. Perhaps to their death.
She for him, and he for her. Had there even been a more unlikely pair of friends?
Clive wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it was because he was desperate for a rainbow and the sky wasn’t going to host them anymore. And Siri was a walking bit of color in a world of gray. Maybe it was because she’d saved his life by pulling him up from the Los Angeles asphalt.
It was ineffable.
“Don’t breathe yet,” he said, his voice shaking. The shock was still there around him like a cloak. The first thing he noticed was the cold. If the air didn’t kill them, hanging like a low fog over everything, muting the atmosphere, the cold would.
He hunched at the gusts of wind and told her again, “Don’t breathe yet.”
But she clutched his hand in hers.
“No.” The mask removed all of the sardonic youth, stripped it away until a robotic survivor took its place. Her eyes peeked out from within the plastic, not being able to hide from the sadness behind dark glasses anymore. “No, it’s fine. See?”
But she was just as afraid as he was. What had they done? What were they thinking?
Instead of taking a step backwards, they took a few forward. Shapes in the fog were eerie and still.
They began walking, breathing in and out through the filters, knowing perhaps that the masks wouldn’t be enough. But as they crested the hill once more, ov
erlooking the city, where they shared a glance that said, Well, this is it, but at least I'm not alone.
“Should we go down?”
“I think so,” she said. “Why not?”
Yeah. Why not? What could they lose?
In truth, humanity was many things, but curiosity was a deeply motivating factor. Perhaps it was what created the search for fire that first time. And maybe love, whenever that initial feeling was birthed.
Clive would be lying if he said he didn’t want to see what was left, even if it was terrible. Even if it was more fire than it was love left in the belly of the beast, he wanted to see it. He raged inside and the earth shuddered beneath his feet as if in answer.
“I didn’t think about earthquakes,” Siri said.
“Asteroids.”
“Well, now that you mention it…” She laughed but it was muted and dead. “Tidal wave.” It was a game now. Clive was thankful for the distraction and realized the shaking had stopped.
He thought for a moment. “Tornadoes.”
“Plague of locusts.” She crossed her arms.
“Good one,” he said taking a step forward. “Water into blood.”
“Rivers. Rivers of it,” she said softly. “Volcanoes.”
“I uh…can’t beat that.” A line of sweat dripped down his back though the air was freezing. He hugged himself against the wind. “Ice storm.”
“You think?”
“No. I was saying…” And just like that, a snowflake appeared.
Clive pulled off his jacket and gave it to Siri. She’d left hers covered in his blood back at the bunker. They walked in silence after that. As they made their way down the hill, Siri seemed deep in thought. Inside her mask, her brows pinched together. “Do you think the cloud has an end? That there’s fresh air somewhere?”
Clive had a panicked moment of clarity. He thought about how he’d brought this girl out from where she was going to be safest, but he pressed that down. It was immediate danger there, immediate danger here. He could navigate nature, but humans…they were more unpredictable. While Siri had dodged falling planes, debris, and even electric currents, she’d managed to almost get murdered by that drifter.