White Horse

by Alex Adams

“It’s going to be okay.”

  “Is it?”

  “Truth?”

  I nod.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Or if it is it won’t be okay in the same way. We’ve lost too much.”

  There’s a wall between us. I long for a sledgehammer.

  “I’m sorry about your brother. I saw his name on the list.”

  He slouches to my side. I want to slip into his arms. He has the perfect place for me right below his chin, but I don’t dare. Not without an invitation. Maybe not even then.

  “I have to get to my parents if they’re still alive.”

  “Are they in the city?”

  “Greece. Every summer they head back to the motherland and talk about how great America is.” He smiles. “When they’re here, all they do is talk about how perfect Greece is.”

  “How the hell are you going to get to Greece?”

  “There are still planes—if you can pay the price.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Blood. Medicine. Food. Whatever they don’t have enough of.”

  The city goes out. The night stays on.

  Nick and I stare at each other through the darkness, three hundred million corpses stacked between us. In another life I could love him. In this life I could only lose him.

  The lights flick back on in the morning. This brings us no comfort, because we know it can’t last. The electricity will leave us forever; it’s just a question of when. We hold our breath and wait.

  DATE: NOW

  The animals have a secret.

  Birds are the first to leave, in one giant airlift, a dense cloud thousands thick, from the surrounding trees. The Roma begin to whisper amongst themselves. Something is happening, but I don’t know what. Mass migration is never a good thing unless it’s fall.

  The lurchers are next. Those lanky Gypsy dogs pace ditches into the earth, their ears low, their tongues thick, red rubber lolling from their mouths.

  Secret keepers, all of them.

  DATE: THEN

  One morning a thousand feet come, shambling along the weather-worn blacktop. They’re a stew of ages and sexes, all of them exhausted, filthy, dull-eyed. They brought their bodies on their journey but forgot to pack their souls.

  “Canadians,” Nick says. “They’re migrating south.”

  “Like the birds,” Morris says.

  The others trickle in behind her. Through the second-floor windows we watch the indigent parade trickle past.

  “We should feed them.” This from a big guy named Troy. He’s barely out of high school. Now there’s no college for kids like him. Everything he learns has to come from the streets.

  “What, all of them?” Casey snaps. Former National Guard. A twig who used to hawk cosmetics.

  Troy crosses his arms, increases his bulk. “They’re starving.”

  Morris serves as peacekeeper. “We can’t feed all those people from our supplies. They’re gonna have to find their own food. There’s still food out there—shelter, too. If they want it bad enough, they’ll find a way. We can’t do everyone’s surviving for them. All we can do is watch and make sure there’s no trouble.”

  The bickering fades to a cease-fire. Everyone knows why there’s shelter. So many died that there’s a surplus of everything except people and fresh food and optimism.

  “We’re being naturally selected,” someone mumbles.

  “No we’re not,” I say. “There’s nothing natural about this.”

  Morris claps her hands, wrestles for control before we turn friends to enemies.

  “Positions, people. Let’s make sure there’s no problems. I don’t think there will be; they’re too beaten down, but they’re desperate, too. Desperate people don’t always think right.”

  Everyone leaps into action. It’s been days since we’ve had new scenery. The power comes and goes as it pleases, and the television and news along with it. New is new. New is different. New is shiny. New means there’s still life.

  A family comes, also from the north road, its members clinging to each other as though the least thing might sever their delicate ties. Their feet are soundless, but they do me a kindness and cough politely to warn me of their approach. I unfold myself from a crouch and shake the numbness from my legs. My hand rubs away the cola foam from my mouth’s chapped edges.

  Each man is a bookend keeping his three children upright. They stop on the sidewalk, their mouths full of questions.

  “We’ve never been here,” one says. “We always meant to but never did.”

  “And now here we are,” says the other. “What’s there to do here?”

  Besides wait to die or fight to live? I don’t say that, though, because I don’t want to frighten the children. But the men know it; that hard truth is ground into their posture.

  “Not much,” I say. “We have a good library and a great museum.”

  I am a tour guide selling my dead city.

  “Is there food here? Some place decent to stay?”

  “If you’ll tell us where to go, we’ll go there.”

  I reel off directions, but they stare at me with blank eyes, because everything that is stale to me blinds them with its newness. So I offer to walk with them a short way and show them what sights still stand. Before we part ways, they press a paper envelope into my hands.

  “It’s all we have,” they tell me. “Worthless at best. But maybe someday …”

  Tickets to Disney World, the happiest place on earth.

  “Be safe,” I say before good-bye.

  There is a long, dim hall inside the old school, and Nick stands at one end with bloodlust smeared the length of his face. At the opposite end, I wear a mask painted with indifference. In between, there’s a doorway that leads to a room with coffee. We set out together: Nick taking long, murderous strides and me on a Monday stroll.

  “I know why you’re pissed,” I say when we meet.

  “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “I’ll do what I need to.”

  “Don’t sacrifice yourself for other people.”

  I stare him down like he’s the devil asking for one last dance.

  “It was the right thing to do.”

  “Bullshit. You could have been raped, beaten, killed. Sold into slavery. A million things.”

  “I’m a lot of things, Nick, but stupid isn’t one of them. They were good people. It was the human thing.” I turn away from him and make a break for the coffee, but he uses my ponytail as a crude brake, then reels me in. His thumb strokes my collarbone. Heat radiates from that tiny spot until I am a bonfire on a dark night.

  “I want you.”

  “Don’t pull my hair like that again.” My protest barely escapes the deafening lust haze.

  “I might.” His eyes make me a promise. “But next time you’ll like it.”

  DATE: NOW

  It’s night when the quake punches its way through the ground. The earth seizes and shakes. Vomits rocks and dirt.

  This is it: the secret the animals were keeping.

  All the usual rules don’t apply. There’s no bathroom to hide in, no table for cover, no doorways with headers strong enough to hold up a roof, just makeshift shacks with the staying power of light-hold hairspray. Flimsy metal walls struggle to stay upright, but they have nothing with which to grab the earth and hold on for the ride.

  I snatch up my backpack and run.

  People zip around me, none of them paying attention as I stumble through the camp. Rocks roll from around the fire pits, creating open paths for the red coals to bounce free. The ground is dry enough for the leafy debris to spark, then burst into naked flame. Mother Nature’s temper tantrum splits the ground, shooting each half into jagged inclines. The dilapidated pickup trucks are homicidal bowling pins, pinning bodies between them. The world becomes a tangle of bodies and metal and movement. Pained braying punctuates the cacophony as the donkeys realize they can’t out-stubborn seismic activity and they rush to save themselves.
>
  We’re running, all of us, with nowhere to go. This can’t be outrun.

  When the ground grinds to a halt, the night holds its breath.

  “Yanni?” I call out.

  A woman is lying on the ground nearby. I help her up. She’s hurt, her face bloodied, but I can’t do anything for her right now. Another woman is a magician’s trick gone wrong, her body severed by a sheet of corrugated iron. There’s no cavalry coming for her, either.

  Yanni is a puppet sprawled across the hood of a pickup truck. A tree pins him to the grill. Gone is the boy who would be a man. He’s devolved, a child again, his jaw shuddering as the tears pour in sheets from his face.

  I race to him. I can’t help it. But there’s nothing I can do to make his body right. There’s no way to separate his ribs from the mangled chrome.

  “Hi, baby boy.” I try not to choke on my tears. “How are you doing?”

  He doesn’t even try to smile. “Cigarette?”

  With shaking hands, I reach into his shirt pocket, roll the paper around a thin finger of tobacco like I’ve watched him do. And although it’s no good for me or my baby, I suck on the stick until the end flares red before wedging it between his lips.

  Smoke leaks from his mouth. Not enough lung capacity to draw a good breath and hold it fast, so he puffs at it quick, quick, slow, before letting it fall. A smoky serpent coils around my wrist as I lift it up again for him to take.

  “Will I die?”

  I don’t want to lie, but the truth hurts too much to tell.

  “No, baby. You’re just sleepy.”

  He nods slowly. “I will die.”

  “We’re all going to die one day.”

  “Today. Where is my mama?”

  Saliva thickens in my throat. I can see his mother from here, burning and inert.

  “With your brothers and sisters.”

  “Good.”

  There’s no room between the tree and the truck for me to slide in alongside him, put my arm around him, give him comfort, so I reach across and fit his hand in mine. His fingertips are ice chips, but I cannot thaw them with my body heat.

  “It’s just a bad dream. When you wake up, this won’t have happened.”

  I am a piece of shit, lying to a dying child.

  “Do you know songs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sing. Please.”

  In a light place in my memories, I find the song my mother sang to me, of a maiden in a valley pleading to her love, begging him not to forsake and leave her. And as I sing to the boy, I cry.

  Miles down, the plates slow dance again, grinding against each other in the dark. Fire spreads, climbing the tinder-dry trees with the ease of firemen scaling ladders. Up, up it goes, until the canopies are ablaze and night becomes artificial day. What buildings still stand are falling now, crushing their contents with no care for whether they hold people or possessions. Dark heads bob and blur as everyone tries to save themselves. Mothers cry out for their children, husbands for their wives. The land is on the move and she is merciless. My hand tightens on Yanni’s arm. I keep singing.

  Flames lick at a truck at the far side of the camp, kissing their way up the metal body like an attentive lover. Higher, higher, until the night explodes. The light stains my vision white as the fireball unfolds like a flower, its petals reaching out … out … out, until it races back to its moment of conception.

  My face is dry and tight. The white spots are old celluloid melting until I’m left with a dim picture of the disaster zone. Bodies still and bodies moving.

  At the edge of my vision something creeps. When I flick my head around to capture the form, it fades. My body turns cold, stiff. In my heart I know what it is, and if that muscle wasn’t already in my boots, it would be sinking fast through my chest and organs. The Swiss is still alive. He survived all this and now he’s getting away.

  But it can’t be. He’s stretched out on a cot, fighting for his life. What I saw was a ghost.

  The hand in mine falls slack. My fingers understand before I do.

  Yanni’s head sags to his shattered chest. All the singing in the world can’t bring him back. A cold mist seeps into my body. Anger will come in time, but for now I need to remain calm, leave this place behind, keep pushing north.

  But first I need to be sure.

  Lisa’s ghost follows me to the shack. My earlier vision was just the night and the trauma and my fear playing cruel tricks on my mind, because the Swiss is still here, dormant and benign in his illness. But something has changed. His wound is the neat, pale seam of a long-ago injury when it should be pink rope.

  What was new has turned old too quickly. It’s not right.

  This time, when I pick up the pillow, I am resolute. All this death, all this destruction and loss, and still I can say the world is better without this one life in it.

  His body tenses as it realizes there is no oxygen to be found in the pillow’s fibers. His fingers curl up, dig into his palms. One moment he’s struggling, then everything fades away. The last switch has been flipped on his life.

  Lights out.

  The end.

  Beneath my boots, the earth gives another shake, rattle, roll. I have to go. There’s no time to make extra-sure the Swiss is gone. A stopped pulse is good enough; I don’t have time for breath and mirrors.

  I tell myself I did this for Lisa and the others, but beneath the lie the truth prevails: this wasn’t revenge. This was insurance. The small black stain on my soul is the premium.

  I killed a man. I killed a man and I don’t care.

  With calm purpose, I slip my arms through the backpack’s straps and cut a path through the dead and the dying. There are enough hands still alive to help those in need. I’m not necessary here. My place is somewhere else.

  I wipe the back of my hand across my eyes and try to convince myself it doesn’t come away wet.

  I killed a man and I don’t care.

  PART

  THREE

  EIGHTEEN

  DATE: THEN

  It’s Morris’s doing, I know it is, constantly pairing me with Nick. She’s got this wild idea that love and romance can still flourish in a dying world, as though the dead are some kind of emotional compost. When I confront her about it, she denies everything.

  “We all talk to him but he gets to talk to no one. Doesn’t seem right, now, does it?”

  I assume the indignant position: palms flat on her desk, leaning inward. It’s behind this pose that I hide my feelings.

  “So you’ve assigned me as his—what? Therapist? Jesus, I was a janitor.”

  “Domestic engineer.”

  “A janitor. And I don’t know a thing about therapy.”

  She shrugs one-shouldered. It’s a feminine movement inside a gender-neutral uniform.

  “You went to therapy.”

  “I’ve flown in a plane, too, but that doesn’t make me a pilot.”

  “Just listen to the guy. These are dark, dark times, my friend, and even cavemen need a shoulder to lean on.”

  DATE: NOW

  I name the donkey Esmeralda for no good reason. It fits. I don’t know why, but when I speak it, the name slips on the way a favorite sweater does on a chilly day.

  She comes willingly, does Esmeralda, for all the quirks of her stubborn species. Maybe she knows where there’s people there’s food. Or maybe she likes the looks of me and wants some company. Or perhaps she just wants to feel like she has purpose.

  So we take turns carrying the backpack. Just because history makes her a beast of burden doesn’t mean I desire the same. I do my share. Either way, she plods along behind me at the end of her rope. When she stops, I do the same. Esmeralda is skilled in the art of finding water and food.

  The Roma camp lies miles behind us now. I don’t know how many. Two days’ worth, however many that is. I’m on the path to Delphi. Yes, I remember what the Roma said about the monster woman who lives there. Medusa, they said, with her snake hairdo and petrifyi
ng gaze.

  Another day slouches by, followed by the night, and on its heels another day. The road narrows the closer I get to Delphi. Or maybe it just seems that way, compressed and colored in ominous tones by the Roma stories.

  My imagination doesn’t conjure up the earth’s split lip as we round the road’s gentle curve. The chasm is real and it’s separating me from where I need to go, so deep and so wide is the injury. There’s a flip-flopping in my belly, as though the little person growing in there senses my longing and finds me pathetic with need. Pressing a not entirely reassuring hand against the bump, I stop to figure my way through.

  There is another road, though it is less traveled. Instead of asphalt, it’s a flattened grass dogleg that jags north, then east, then north again until it fades from sight. It’s not its disappearance that bothers me but the where it’s disappearing to. While the road slices through towns and countryside, the lesser path delves. Into a bank of brush and olive trees it slithers, parting the greenery just enough to dip its tongue inside.

  There should be a sign, one fashioned from weather-worn planks, staked into the ground. There should be a fading message in once-white paint, warning me to turn back or die. But there’s nothing, not even a dent in the grass where a stake might have been shoved into the ground. The lack of a sign is a sign in itself: Keep Out.

  Foreboding fills me until I’m bloated with dread. What would Nick say? If it was just we two sitting in his comfortable office, batting banter across the low table, what would he tell me about handling this situation? I suck in my breath, hold it until my chest stings, then let it out nice and easy because I know what he’d say.

  He’d tell me to take a chance. To not be afraid to explore the unknown. It’s only strange until we stare it in the face and say, Hey, how are ya doing?

  “Hey, how are ya doing?” I mumble the words, don’t inject any substance or volume. The last thing I want to do is tempt fate by announcing my arrival. So I stare down the unknown, hoping to dispel its air of doom.

  Esmeralda snorts, her hooves suddenly stamping an agitated dance on the blacktop.