White Horse

by Alex Adams

  “Settle, girl. Easy.” I whisper the words and listen. The sensation of someone— or something—else creeps over me like a smallpox blanket settling around my shoulders.

  Out there, alien breath is held as fast as mine. It eases out in time with my own. Could be paranoia, but it’s not paranoia if they’re really out there. Isn’t that how it goes? I’ve long tired of this world where I’m constantly stalked by things I can almost see, things that hide on the edges of plain sight. Once upon a time, just a few months ago, if you held your bag tight, stayed away from dark alleys, locked your doors and windows, you were relatively safe from harm.

  My hand tightens on the rope that binds us. Judging from the defiant head toss and the challenging snort, she’s not happy about me leading her off the path and into the olive grove. She doesn’t have to be comfortable with it, she just has to follow and watch my back.

  The bushes and undergrowth have become set in their ways and they’re reluctant to part when my boots tamp them down and shove them apart. We come to an uneasy agreement where they spread enough to let us through, then spring up into their previous position. This way they retain their wild dignity and Esmeralda and I have more or less safe passage.

  The wall of silvery green swallows us whole, presenting me with a double-edged blade I have no choice but to grasp. Along one honed edge, that presence dances with its copycat breath, while the unknown glides along the other. Choose the evil you haven’t looked in the mouth and counted its iron fillings. Risk the other choice being your salvation.

  Nonetheless, the choice is made and I press on with my ass on my ass. Laughter burbles up my throat. This is ridiculous. Nothing about any of this is sane. Each tragedy has stacked up on the last so that I’m left staring at a teetering tower of black blocks. And yet, the harder I stare at them, the less real they become.

  “If I’m crazy, do I know I’m crazy or am I in denial?”

  Esmeralda says nothing. She plods along behind me without expression. We walk quietly, although not silently, and I hope that the sounds of nature’s takeover are enough to drown out the us.

  “It’s not just a river, eh?”

  We walk and I watch for her, the wild snake-haired woman of the woods.

  DATE: THEN

  Nick laughs when I say, “If you need to talk, I’m here for you.”

  “Did Morris send you to do my job for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t want to.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  I look up at him and, despite myself, my lips twitch upwards. “Are you analyzing me now?”

  He gives that half smile, the one that should be delivered over drinks in a dimly lit bar instead of this makeshift infirmary.

  “Why not?”

  I laugh, shake my head. “Don’t even try it. I don’t want to be picked apart like meat from a chicken bone.”

  “Why not?”

  Why not, indeed? But I know why. I don’t want him rooting around inside me, helping himself to the bits and pieces I stash away for safekeeping. Gadgets and walls, some of them hiding silly things like my attraction to him.

  “Because … because it’s easier to keep all this together, to keep the horror in perspective if I wrap it up in pretty paper and stash it in a box marked Do Not Touch. That’s why. Giving it a poke won’t lead to anything good.” I expect him to laugh again but he doesn’t. Instead, he nods. His booted feet swing up until they’re resting on his desk. Mine mirror his. For a moment I think we’re two people who look comfortable together, and maybe part of me is, but there are pieces of me that are anything but comfortable with Nick. Looking at him pokes and prods me in tender places I don’t want to be touched.

  Hands clasp behind his neck. He shifts in the chair, and as he does, his eyes slide from my neck to my navel and back up to meet my eyes. “So pick me apart. Analyze me. Do what Morris ordered.”

  I swallow slow, wishing I could rise from the chair and walk away, but I know if I do, the movement will be clunky and herky-jerky. And if there’s one thing I don’t want, it’s to look anything less than cool and composed in front of him. I don’t want him to see what’s there. I don’t want him to see what isn’t there.

  “I think you’re like me.”

  “Go on.”

  His words embolden me; my thoughts begin to pick up steam, and along with them, my mouth.

  “I think you’re functioning on autopilot, doing what has to be done. Part of you died in that war because you’re a doctor, not a killer, and being ordered to kill made you feel like shit, then you came back here, to hell, and all you found was another serving of death, only bigger and scarier and more personal, because it took everyone you loved. I think you want me because I’m from before, when things were normal and sane. I remind you of the way it used to be. It’s not me you desire, it’s the memories I evoke. I belong to that other world. And any ‘us’ there could have been belongs to that world, too.”

  On that note, my voice dies so I sit and wait and watch. At first there’s nothing, but I can see him chewing on my words and I’m half afraid he’ll tell me I’m right, that it’s not me, really, he wants, but the past and me by default because I’m a relic from that time.

  “You know what I want right now?”

  A thousand things spring to mind, all involving twisted sheets and bodies slick with sweat. My eyebrow lifts, asking the question because my mouth can’t be trusted.

  When he smirks, I can’t discern if he’s inside my head without permission or if I’m wearing my lust on my face for him to see.

  “Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

  “KFC?” Not what I expected to hear.

  “No. Kentucky Fried Chicken. The way it used to be when we were kids. Crispy skin, gravy, coleslaw, the whole shebang.”

  “Back before fast food became too fast to be good.”

  “You’re there,” he says.

  “I’d kill for pizza.” The words pop out easily, and then in a flash I realize what I’ve said. I should feel bad and I do, but I can’t help myself, I start to laugh.

  Nick throws back his head and lets out a belly laugh.

  “Shit. Could I be less sensitive?”

  “Gallows humor, baby. It’s good to get that out.”

  When, I wonder, did I go from Zoe to baby? “But—”

  “Don’t worry, it was funny.” He pats his lap. “Come here.”

  “I’m your appointed therapist. It would be unprofessional.”

  “Where’s the harm?”

  “I could love you and then you’ll be gone or you could love me and then White Horse gets me and I die. That’s the harm. We’ve been hurt enough. All of us.”

  I look away because I’ve said too much. I intended to close a tiny window and wound up throwing open a door.

  Nick doesn’t speak. His boots fall from the desk; he rises from the chair and moves around the desk to my side of the barrier.

  “You sound like Oprah.”

  “Dead. About a month ago.” Morris bounces in through the open door and stops. “Am I interrupting?”

  I look at Nick. He’s watching me, waiting for my cue.

  “Yes,” I say slowly. “I kind of think you are.”

  “About time,” she says.

  He touches me then, and I am lost in him forever, though I do not speak the words.

  We make love at the end of the world, but we don’t pin a name to what we do. Lack of a label makes it no less true. The love is there in his hands as they clamp my hips hard against him. It’s there on his tongue as he sets me ablaze with explicit descriptions of all the things he wants for us. His eyes shine with it when he understands I’ve let down all my walls for him and only him.

  Love fills all the gaps in our souls.

  “I have to go,” Nick whispers in the dark one night.

  “What?” I prop myself up on one elbow and try to look as serious as I can with bare breasts and hair styled with an egg beate
r. “You can’t just leave.”

  “If there’s even a chance my parents are alive, I’m gonna take it.”

  And what about me? What about us? I leave the words in my head, don’t speak them, because they’re soaked in selfishness.

  “What if I want to come with you?” Ask me to come. Please.

  His fingers stroke the curve of my hip.

  “You’ll be safer here. At least I’ll know where you are.”

  “None of us are safe anywhere.”

  “I won’t risk you.”

  “Look around, Nick, don’t be naïve. We’re all at risk.”

  He grabs my arms. His fingers press hard against my flesh.

  “Do whatever you have to to survive, Zoe. You’re the best thing in my world. Don’t fuck it up by dying.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  His fingers unhook themselves from my skin. He buries one hand in my hair. Holds my face with the other. And this time when he’s inside me he roars until he’s empty and I am full.

  In the quiet afterward, I stay close to him, half hoping our bodies will melt together so we’ll be bound forever.

  “Don’t go where I can’t follow,” I whisper. “Please.”

  I will stay awake. I will. But sleep snatches me and drags me far from him. When I awake, it’s in a warm bed with a stone-cold Nick-sized patch along the length of my body. The frost spreads until it holds my heart hostage in its crystalline grip. Nick has left, I can feel it.

  I can’t hate him for leaving me. How could I when all I’m capable of is loving him?

  “What is it?”

  I stare at the envelope in Morris’s outstretched hand. She waves it at me like I’m supposed to do something clever with it.

  “It’s a letter.”

  “Is it a bill? Because the utilities haven’t been all that reliable lately.”

  She flips it at me. “It’s from lover man.”

  “Nick?”

  “Unless you’ve got another one stashed away.”

  I snatch the envelope from her hands, pinch it between a finger and thumb. “He left.”

  “Why didn’t you go with him?”

  “I tried.”

  “And he said no?”

  So I fill her in on our pillow talk and watch as she shakes her head increasingly fast until I’m sure her head will pop clean off her shoulders.

  “Shit, girl. You’re gonna follow him, aren’t you?”

  With fingers stiff from anger, I stuff the letter into my pocket. “When hell freezes over. He left me.”

  “You’re gonna follow him,” she says.

  “Fuck him.”

  “Right now, that’s just the anger talking.”

  My anger talks a lot once I get to my room and hermetically seal myself off from the compassionate world. Mostly it rants and raves about what a jerk Nick is for leaving, for not giving me a chance to go with him. He started this. He made the first move. He made me love him.

  God, how I love him.

  We’d been building up to this from the day I walked into his office with a head full of worry about that damn jar. I laugh bitterly because the jar started all this: the end of the world and me falling in love with Nick. With one smooth move, it destroyed, built, then devastated.

  I fall to my knees, bury my face in my hands, and sob.

  DATE: NOW

  Delphi is more than ruins and remnants. There’s a souvenir shop, its postcards long gone, having fluttered off in a stiff wind, or perhaps decomposed into a pile of colorful pulp before being rinsed away by a cleansing rain. The rack still sits outside the shop, rusted and ready for new stock. One firm push would force it to turn with a reluctant squeal. Branches and leaves blow through town, past stores with names that mean nothing to me. I can guess, though, what they used to contain. Through one window, a baker’s peel is visible, long and leaning against the bakery wall. Four other walls hold up a roof from which meat hooks descend, brown with stale blood.

  Esmeralda takes food where she can find it, and she finds it in abundance. But I don’t have that luxury. These grasses and plants are mostly alien, and I have more than just myself to consider.

  I should stay hidden.

  I have to eat.

  My child needs to eat.

  It’s no contest.

  “See that?” I speak of a narrow building with a blue door pressed into the middle. “I’m going in. And you’re coming with me.”

  My companion says nothing. Keeps on chewing something of interest low to the ground.

  “No, no, you have to,” I say. “Just in case.”

  A gentle snot rain sprinkles me as she lifts her head and snorts, but she follows me, leaving a polite distance between us.

  The asphalt crust is hard beneath my boots. It’s an old habit the way I stand at the road’s edge and look both ways. Although it’s not traffic I’m trying to dodge now, but trouble. But really, what can I do if it comes? I could fall back into the woods, or run forward and hide in a building. Slender options.

  Pebbles crumble away from the blacktop as I work the leather toe against the hardened tar.

  Think, Zoe. Think.

  My pregnancy pokes holes into my brain matter, making the thoughts harder to congeal and solidify. In the untamed groves, I am weaponless. Stealth is my only real advantage. So I cross the road, make the baker’s peel mine, lift a knife with a gleaming edge from the meat shop. And I rest easier because I am armed once more.

  The blue door opens freely.

  Silence pours into the street accompanied by the sweet stench of old milk and older cheese. There’s an omnipresent gloom that reaches out and pulls us in. The door swings shut behind us; its click is a death knell.

  Stop it, Zoe.

  This is a grocery store of sorts. I hoped it would be. It’s not like an American supermarket. The floor is a dark and violent concrete. Products are cramped on shelves that cut me off at the neck. A thick blanket of dust mutes all signs of color to a depressing dinge.

  My breath catches; my lungs don’t want the sour air. I force the spongy organs to draw oxygen. Right now I’m grateful I’m long past that first trimester, otherwise I’d be on my knees, painting the floor green. The shop’s stock comes into focus: there’s food on these here shelves, and it’s processed and packed and likely still edible. Whoever said processed foods were bad hadn’t vacationed at the end of the world.

  The second best thing about being in a grocery store is that there’s a ready supply of plastic bags. I rip open a box of oatmeal and pour it into a neat heap on the floor for Esmeralda before reaching for a fistful of sacks. And I apologize for the burden I’m about to bestow on her.

  She doesn’t seem to care.

  It’s the chocolate that catches my attention. I can almost taste the sweet, smooth confection before I peel away the packaging and cram it into my mouth. Flavor explodes and my taste buds shiver with orgasmic pleasure. Moments later, there’s a rolling sensation in my belly as my baby somersaults. I laugh and unwrap another bar—some kind of wafer layers with chocolate pressed between. I scrape off the top wafer with my teeth and shamelessly lick the others clean. Soon my fingers are sticky and there’s that feeling of insubstantial fullness that only comes from ingesting mass quantities of junk food. My body hums as I surf the sugar high; I’m Superwoman shoving boxed foods and luxuries like toilet paper into bags.

  And then Esmeralda stops snuffling the ground and begins the soft-shoe shuffle of unease.

  My entire body tenses. Even my baby holds still. The thought is fleeting: how sad it is that my child has to come into a world where there’s no chance for normal, no pretense even of safety.

  The word floats in on a malevolent draft from beneath the blue door: Abomination.

  A taunt.

  If not for the donkey’s agitation, I could convince myself my mind had manufactured the word using my fears as tools.

  Someone is out t
here. The cleaver takes on new weight, reminding me it’s ready and waiting should the need arise.

  The wall presses against my back as I take a measured step closer. Gravity works its magic and eases me to the ground. My bones creak in appreciation. From here I can see the front door and both windows. There’s no other way in or out. I balance a candy bar on my belly and wait for dark to come.

  Minutes tick by. They huddle together to form hours. I don’t know how many, only that the sun shifts slowly in the sky.

  The heat grows, but down here on the concrete floor I can feel the cool of the earth seeping into my skin. When Esmeralda dumps her oats, I try not to care about the smell.

  Wait. Watch. Listen.

  Eventually, the night strides in and forces the sun from her comfortable chair. As she’s unseated, so am I. For hours there’s been no noise beyond the usual sounds nature makes. No more whispered taunts, no breathing that doesn’t belong. But I don’t trust it so we have to leave under the cover of dark and hope that gives us enough of an advantage.

  The truth is I could leave Esmeralda, cut my way through the land with just me to worry about, but I don’t want to. Her company makes me feel less lonely. One by one, everyone I’ve cared about has been stripped from my life, and yet I can’t stop feeling a bond with this beast. Please let me be able to keep her safe.

  We ease out of the building, onto the barren road. Hugging the curb is a necessity because I can’t see my way back into the bush without light. Risking a fall is not an option. Whoever is out there is likely watching anyway. For now, all I can do is make that task more difficult by hiding in the shadows, the baker’s long-handled peel held in my hands like a magician’s staff.

  At first there’s a gentle wind that stirs the leaves making a soft wikka wikka sound. This swallows our footsteps, so I welcome its presence, until a short way down the road it dies, leaving us exposed.

  I stop. A half a beat later, there’s the faint echo of another footfall. We’re being followed or pursued. Is there even a difference? One implies a sense of urgency, while the other says, Hmm, let’s wait and see how this plays out. Either way, I don’t like it, nor does my central nervous system; it’s shooting adrenaline like my body is a firing range.