Fear: The Quiet Apocalypse

by T M Edwards

  When I moved my head I heard a crackling noise, and reached up to find that I hadn’t even washed the soap out of my hair before I’d fallen asleep.

  Groaning, I pulled my pants into the shower cubicle and fished in the pocket for my last shower token. I shoved it into the box, and painfully pushed myself to my feet to rinse my hair. I felt like I’d been run over by a truck.

  Finally clean and clothed, I grabbed my cane and left the bathroom. The common room was empty except for the oil lamp that always burned there, and a solitary figure who sat at the end of one table with their head on their folded arms.

  Deciding to go outside rather than try to sleep in the dorm, I walked as quietly as I could, but the person still heard me, and lifted their head. It was Sam. When he saw me, he jumped up and ran to me, and grabbed me in a bear hug. He still smelled like blood.

  “I’m so sorry,” he murmured in my ear, then set me down.

  I looked up and touched his face lightly with my fingertips. “I’m sorry, too.”

  “What are you sorry for?”

  I remembered how I’d screamed at him, and forcibly pulled him out of the van. “I’m sorry I reacted so badly.”

  He cupped my face between his hands. “Deidre, you saved all of us. I am the one that is sorry. I wish I had been stronger.”

  I looked into his eyes, so close to mine. His hands were warm on my cheeks. I could feel each exhale of his breath. I couldn’t even remember what I was going to say.

  “I...I was just going to go outside.”

  Sam straightened, and let his hands fall. “I’ll come with you. You go, I’ll get the blankets.”

  So I started my slow pace toward the door, while Sam jogged off to get the blankets.

  Once we sat in the open air with our backs against the wall, I had a chance to see that Sam’s jaw and eye were deeply bruised. I touched the bruises gently. “Do you think Alan is going to be okay?”

  “I hope so.”

  I let my hand drop and my head fall back against the wall. “I can’t imagine being Dalen right now.”

  “How so?”

  “Just...imagine knowing that you chose someone for something, and they died because of it. That has to be so hard.” Unless he really is a sociopath, in which case he probably won’t care.

  Sam didn’t answer, and after a moment I turned my head to see that there was a deeply haunted look in his eyes. I could tell that he was reliving something. I wondered if it had to do with why he had nightmares.

  “I chose…” Sam’s voice was so quiet that I barely heard him. “I made a choice, back then.” He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. “We were...we were in this little town. Out in the desert. There was this little girl.” He shuddered, and he was silent for so long that I started to think he wouldn’t say any more. “Her toy ball got away from her and it rolled toward us. I picked it up, and I held it out to her. She started to run toward me...but she stepped on a mine. A mine that my guys missed.” He swallowed hard, and looked down at his hands as if he was still holding the toy. “Her shoe...her shoe, just her shoe, it landed right in front of my feet. It was stained with her blood.”

  I watched him, watched the lines of his face as his confession came tumbling from his lips. I heard his words, but my brain was not ready to accept the depth of the trauma that this man had experienced. I could not comprehend this level of pain. I saw the horror of remembrance in his eyes, felt the trembling in his limbs as his shoulder touched mine. I stared at his hands when he held them up and looked at them as if they were still covered in blood. I could not imagine. Could not hope to understand. Everything in my life seemed silly in comparison to this.

  “Deidre,” Sam dropped his hands and looked at me. The quiet pain in his face was almost more than I could stand. “It was my fault, Deidre. I killed her.”

  My eyes burned, and my throat was so tight that it hurt to breathe. “You didn’t know,” I whispered. “You couldn’t have known.”

  Sam groaned, and knit his fingers together behind his head. “Every night. Every night, I see her, Deidre. I hear the shots. The shots that followed when her people thought we killed her. My men screaming. Blood...blood and screams. Every night, blood and screams.” He dropped his hands, and grabbed my face. I was too startled to resist. “Except when I’m with you,” he whispered. “When you are touching me, there is no blood and there are no screams. There is only silence. Blessed, glorious silence.” With that, he leaned forward, and before I knew what was happening, his lips were touching mine.

  I had never so much as kissed a man before. Not once, not even in grade school. This was not like in the movies, perfect and romantic. This was desperate, lonely, frightened. His hands were pulling me to him, and I realized that mine were tangled in his hair. I didn’t know what this feeling was. This longing to not be myself anymore, but to become part of someone else. It was frightening, and exhilarating, and suffocating.

  Just when I felt like I couldn’t breathe, he pulled back. Just a few inches. Enough to look in my eyes as I fought to catch my breath. His voice trembled. “I think...I think I love you.”

  Then, as if he realized what he’d said, he pulled away from me and stood up. He tried to walk off, but I pushed myself to my feet and grabbed his arm. “I think…” I took a deep breath, and the fluttering in my stomach resolved into a sharp ache. “I think...maybe I love you, too.”

  ***

  It was daylight, and that meant another water run. This time, it was just the three of us who weren’t affected by the spores.

  To my shock, Dalen had tried to push us to take two other people with us. Sam had flat-out refused, and I stood with him. None of us had said anything about our respective meltdowns. Not that it seemed like it would have mattered. Dalen didn’t seem to care if one or two people died, as long as the rest were saved. A perspective I might have understood...but not to this degree. There was a difference between risking a life to save many...and recklessly sending someone that was almost guaranteed not to make it back, with little potential for any benefit.

  So, the three of us with our overnight gear climbed into the van. I chanced a glance at the place where Alan had been sitting yesterday. The blood had been wiped from the wall and the window glass. I silently thanked whoever had taken the time out here, and allowed themselves to be exposed to the spores, to do this for us.

  Poor Zena was subdued. Before I could offer to let her sit up front, she climbed into the back and sat on the floor. Her eyes would not meet mine. So I climbed into the front passenger seat. I’d wanted to take over driving, but Sam assured me that he would be fine, and reminded me that he knew Vegas at least slightly better than I did.

  I wasn’t sure where to look. I wanted to watch Sam, to relive last night. I wanted to remember every detail. Nothing had happened, beyond the kiss. Nothing except us falling asleep next to each other with our shoulders touching.

  I also was afraid to look at him, lest Zena notice, or Sam feel my eyes on him. So I ended up staring at the road in front of us, first the dusty gravel, and then the pavement, as we grew ever closer to the high-rises and casinos in the distance.

  When we reached the same supermarket as yesterday, I could tell that Sam was still looking for Anna. But there was nothing there, besides the sprawling parking lot punctuated with trash and light poles.

  I opened my door to get out, but Sam put his hand on my arm. “How about me and Zena bring stuff here, and you can load it?”

  Zena didn’t protest, or even respond, so I allowed myself to be convinced. Walking across that store with a broken ankle had been a rather daunting idea, and I was sore from where the cart had fallen on me yesterday. So I waited, and when they emerged with carts full of bottled water and a few sodas, I worked on transferring everything as they returned inside for more.

  Two trips later, Sam said that it was time to move onto the next store. So we drove the streets, our eyes scanning for any business that was likely to be worth our time. We kep
t careful note of our route, and never strayed far from the main roads.

  When the sun reached noon, Sam parked the van near a playground, and we all sat on the steps of the huge plastic playset and ate our energy bars and jerky. Zena finally seemed to be cheering up a bit. I watched as she launched herself high on one of the swings, her head thrown back and her eyes closed with a smile on her face.

  The next store we found was a smaller grocery store. As we drove up to the entrance, something seemed strange, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The doors were open, and the parking lot was empty just like every other place, except for a lone white car in one corner. Trash scudded around the asphalt, driven by the breeze.

  I had agreed to stay in the van again, but as Sam and Zena walked through the doors, it hit me what was wrong. Most of these places were covered in trash and debris, inside and out. Even from outside, we could usually see what condition they were in.

  But this store...what I could see of it anyway, was pristine. Packed shelves, neatly arranged. No trash on the floors. There was no way this place had been ignored, while all others were ransacked.

  Are you seriously complaining that the store is CLEAN?

  But WHY is it clean?

  Maybe it just is. Why does there have to be a reason?

  After a few moments of being unable to shake my unease, I grabbed my cane and followed my friends into the dim interior. As I passed through the glass, I could hear Sam and Zena conversing quietly, as well as the sound of wheels on the floor.

  The contrast was even more eerie from inside. There was no stench of decaying food. The produce bins sat empty, rather than full of rotting organic matter. There were no plastic bags fluttering on the turntables. No old weekly advertisements crumpled in corners. Nothing was out of place.

  “Sam?” I called, realizing just as the word left my mouth that there was a shadow off to my left that was moving. As soon as I called Sam’s name, it sped up, until I caught a full glimpse of it between two check-out aisles. It was a man, running bent over, with a torn shirt and no shoes. He was running toward where Sam and Zena were, and he had a crowbar clenched in his hand.

  “Sam! Zena! Look out!” I shouted, doubling my pace, fear making my heart pound. “There’s a guy, he has a weapon!”

  As the man closed the distance between himself and my friends, a feral roar issued from his throat. At the end of an aisle I saw him. His arm raised, the crowbar in his hand, and down.

  The sickening thud that accompanied the motion was so loud that it froze me in my tracks. A scream followed soon upon its heels. Zena. Then multiple, smaller impacts, like the sound of fists landing. Sam yelled, and I forced myself forward. There was the clatter of metal on the floor. I limped down the cereal aisle as fast as I could, and reached the end to find Zena crumpled on the floor and Sam locked in combat with the mysterious man. They were rolling on the floor, both grunting, the man growling in a way that sounded more animalistic than human. For what seemed like an eternity, I looked between the fallen girl, and the crowbar that lay on the floor. My heart told me to help Zena, but my head insisted that I try to help. Finally my brain won, and I dropped my cane to limp forward and pick the crowbar up with both hands.

  “Hit him!” Sam yelled. I lifted the bar over my head, with the curved end pointed down, but I hesitated. What if I hit Sam? What if…

  Sam grunted, and rolled over with the man on top of him. “Hit him! Now!” he ordered, and I shrieked as my arms moved of their own accord, bringing the sharp tip of the bar down onto the back of the man’s head. The sound it made...it was the worst sound I could possibly imagine. The man spasmed as the metal sunk into the base of his skull, then went limp. I staggered backward, unable to comprehend what I had just done.

  “I...I...I killed…”

  But Sam was rushing to Zena’s side, and ignored me. I watched as he pulled the girl’s limp figure onto his lap and turned her over, brushing her hair aside. “She’s still breathing.”

  Choking on the tightness that had seized my throat, I collapsed to the floor next to Sam as he shook Zena gently. There was blood streaked all over the side of her face, and matted in her hair.

  “Is she…”

  “I don’t know,” Sam snapped. He tapped her cheek. “Zena? Zena, can you hear me?”

  Zena’s eyes fluttered, and she groaned. “What happened?”

  Sam helped her sit up slowly, and she whimpered. There was so much blood on her face that I couldn’t see where she had been hit. “Zena, where does it hurt?”

  She raised a shaking hand to point to her cheek, and Sam heaved an enormous sigh. He glanced over at me. “That’s good. She might have a fractured cheekbone, but it’s better than a fractured skull.” to her, he added “Take your time. We aren’t in a hurry.”

  I looked back to see the body of the feral man laying on the floor, and had to crawl away when the realization of what I’d done hit my stomach, and I was overwhelmed with nausea.

  At some point, Sam was there to hold my hair back. When the heaving finally subsided, he helped me to my feet.

  “Sam, I…”

  “I know. Come on, we’ve just got to keep moving forward.” The gentle touch of his lips on my clammy forehead took away any sting his words might have held. I wanted to cry in his arms. I wanted to tell him what a horrible, awful, miserable excuse for a human being that I was. How I was now a murderer.

  But now was not the time. Sam picked up my cane and handed it to me. Zena was leaving heavily on the handle of her cart, her face that odd shade of gray that no white person would ever achieve. With her free arm she was swiping at her face, trying to use her sleeve to clean off the blood. She muttered frantically under her breath as Sam turned away to pick up a flat of water.

  “Zena?” I limped toward her quickly. “Zena, what’s wrong?”

  “Blood,” she whined. “Blood on me. Get it off!” she wailed.

  “Okay, okay, calm down! Calm down! I’ll get some water.” I turned around to find Sam approaching with a bottle of water held out toward me. I twisted the lid to open it. Zena was actively panicking now, hyperventilating and flapping her hands. I couldn’t find a towel or napkin anywhere, so I ended up pulling off my shirt and dampening it with water while Zena shook her head and moved her hands frantically. As I cleaned away the sticky mess, she very gradually calmed down, until her face was mostly clean and her panicked breaths had subsided into ones that were merely shaky. New blood seeped from the cut on her face, which would need stitches, but at least the worst of it was gone.

  “We’re a sorry bunch, aren’t we?” I asked nobody in particular. Me in my bra and pants with my blood-stained shirt in my hands, Zena with a gash on her face, and Sam who was looking rather pale, with the still-healing wound on his forearm.

  Sam handed me a gallon jug of water to put in the cart. “Let’s just get this done so we can go home.”

  Day 55

  I woke with the first rays of dawn. There was a rock digging into my back through my sleeping bag. I sat up and used the hairband on my wrist to wrestle the mass of my hair into a bun.

  Looking to make sure Sam was still sleeping, I got up and slid my shoes on, then walked to the van to check on my shirt, which was hanging on the side mirror. The bloodstains would probably never come out fully, but at least it wasn’t sticky anymore. I grabbed it to see if it was dry. Slightly damp. It would have to suffice. I pulled it on, shivering a little in the chill of the morning. Then I limped back to my sleeping bag and crawled back in to try and warm up. I gathered it around my head until there was just a small space left for me to see through.

  Sam stirred, then sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Good morning.”

  I looked up at him from my spot on the ground, with my sleeping bag covering everything but my eyes. “Morning.”

  “Cold?”

  I shrugged.

  “Hungry?” At my nod, he stood up and I heard the crunch of his shoes on the rocks as he walked to the van, t
hen the sound of the door sliding open. Murmured voices emanated from within as he spoke quietly to Zena, who had wanted to sleep inside the vehicle. I hadn’t wanted to leave her alone in there, but it had been obvious that the girl needed some time by herself. I hoped she was going to be okay.

  Sam soon returned with two granola bars, and placed one on the dirt right in front of my nose. I groaned and accepted that I was going to have to choose between cold and hungry. “Thanks.” I sat up, then tore into the plastic package and took a bite. “Does Zena seem okay?”

  He glanced toward the van, and shrugged. “I don’t know. Are you?”

  I tried to swallow the granola to respond, but ended up nearly choking on it, and spent a solid half-minute coughing. Sam offered me some water, and sat there looking concerned until I could breathe again. He was adorable when he was concerned. No, Deidre. Not the time. Not the place. “I...I guess so.” My memory of the day before felt like a wound that has been numbed with lidocaine. I could still vaguely feel that the pain was there, but if I poked at it, the whole site of the wound was unresponsive to sensation.