Doom Days

by Beaman, Sara

  Josephine approached a fisherman. The two of them exchanged a few words. She came back looking dejected.

  “What’s wrong?” Isaac asked.

  “There’s just one boat to Cancun a week,” she said. “We’ll have to wait until Friday. Apparently it’s a long trip. Farther than Stephanie thought it would be.”

  “It’s only three days,” he said, trying to sound optimistic. “No big deal.” He wondered if their money would sustain them for that long.

  She nodded, but her expression was sour. “He said there’s an abandoned hotel south of here where outsiders stay. I guess we could go there, get out of the sun.”

  “Sounds good.” He smiled and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked too tired to return the gesture.

  ****

  The hotel was no more than fifteen minutes up the beach. Next to an open-air café with a caved in roof, they found a room that looked out onto the beach, its doorknob removed. The inside was empty—no bed, no furniture. There was a hole near the ceiling that might have been home to an air conditioning unit; now it was letting in air, rain, and bugs.

  “Maybe we could find something a little less... this,” Josephine suggested, and they went back out into the brilliant afternoon sunlight.

  It was then that they noticed a man in the courtyard beyond the ruined café, sitting on a deck chair next to a swimming pool gone murky brown with decaying palm fronds and algae. He was a white guy, tan with bleach-blond hair. He wore a canvas visor and aviator glasses, and he was reading a waterlogged copy of In Style magazine.

  He looked up as Isaac and Josephine approached. “You two new here?” he asked in the American non-accent of a television reporter. A Californian, maybe. Fortyish.

  “Yes,” Josephine said. “You?”

  He shook his head. “This is my home,” he said, gesturing to the hotel. “You’re welcome to stay here, of course, as long as you like.” He stood up and offered a hand to Isaac. “My name is Alex. It’s nice to meet you two. You look tired, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “Isaac.” Isaac shook Alex’s hand.

  “Josephine,” Jo said, shading her eyes.

  “You two are...?” Alex’s eyes went to Josephine’s ring finger.

  “Married,” she replied.

  Alex nodded. “Want some juice or something? We make a shit ton of pineapple juice here.”

  “That would be great.”

  “Two pineapple juices, then. Don’t go anywhere.” He shoved the magazine under his armpit and went into the café.

  Josephine sat down on a faded, filthy deck chair with a sigh. Isaac remained standing, scanning the perimeter. The rooms were spread out over several tiny hacienda-style buildings with brightly painted walls, many two or three stories tall, some partially collapsed. Lots of nooks and crannies for people to hide. It made him nervous. Alex returned with two oversize tumblers full to the brim with juice and handed them to Isaac and Josephine.

  “So you’re from Odyne?”

  Isaac panicked. How the hell did he know that? Then he looked down and realized his ID was still clipped to his shirt. He ripped it off and shoved it in his pocket. “Uh, yeah.”

  “You’re not the first ones to come through here.”

  “Really?” asked Josephine.

  “I see escapees from Odyne at least once a month. Heard things there are pretty miserable.”

  “How did you get here?” asked Isaac, eager to change the subject.

  “I was here on vacation,” Alex said. “I couldn’t have been more lucky. After the Collapse the authorities here just cut off all ties with the outside for a year. By then the outbreak was over.”

  “How’d they manage that?”

  “What? Keeping outsiders away?”

  Isaac nodded.

  “They shot anyone trying to get in.”

  Josephine made a face over the rim of her glass.

  “You do what you have to,” Alex said. “Things are different now.”

  Isaac had no trouble seeing the wisdom in that.

  “So what do you do here?” he asked.

  “Not a whole hell of a lot,” Alex said, laughing. “I’m an orthopedic surgeon, so the locals help me out day to day, and I help them out as best I can when someone busts a leg or whatever.”

  “Don’t you have family or anything back in America?” Isaac asked.

  Alex’s face darkened. “Most likely not. Not anymore.”

  “So you were here alone when it happened?”

  “I’d just gotten divorced. Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  There was a long silence.

  “So what’s happening back in America now?” Isaac asked. “Anything?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Alex said. “Everything between Miami and Vancouver is dead. Or at least it might as well be, for as much as we hear about it.”

  “Do you think that’s really true?” Josephine asked.

  “Probably not. I mean, think about the religious wingnuts with their rapture bunkers. I’m sure some of them are still around, underground maybe.” He licked his lips. “Actually, I heard something recently about a university in the south that set up its own perimeter around a tiny nuclear plant. Shot intruders on sight, just like we did here. Now they’ve set up some kind of utopian compound or something.”

  “Really.” Josephine’s eyebrows went up. “Where in the south?”

  “North Carolina, I think. Can’t remember for sure. There’s a guy in Cancun who’s practically a missionary for the place,” Alex continued. “Or a talent scout, maybe. He’s looking for people with advanced degrees to come back and populate the place.”

  Josephine put her juice down on the deck with a jerky, abrupt motion, sloshing a bit of it over the rim. “Really?”

  “Well I haven’t met him in person, but that’s what I’ve heard.” He shrugged. “If you ask me the entire thing sounds creepy.”

  Isaac could almost hear Josephine’s thoughts: maybe they’ll want the intel on the flash drive.

  What was on the flash drive, anyway?

  “I wouldn’t go back,” Alex continued. “America is dead.”

  Josephine wasn’t listening.

  ****

  Later Alex showed them to a room left mostly intact: a king bed with clean sheets and mosquito netting hanging from the ceiling, windows extant, dead AC unit still in the wall. “Not sure I need to tell you this, but the plumbing doesn’t work anymore,” he explained, and handed Isaac a plastic bucket. “Come on out if you need water or anything.”

  When he was gone, Josephine collapsed onto the bed and shaded her eyes with her arm.

  “Jo,” Isaac said, “what’s on the flash drive?”

  “It’s the formula for an herbicide that kills strangle runner.”

  Isaac’s eyes went wide. If any scrap of data was worth anything in this world, that might be it. Still, university guy notwithstanding, he imagined finding a buyer would be just about impossible.

  “I was thinking,” Isaac said, but in truth the thoughts were coming as he spoke. “Maybe we shouldn’t try to go back to the US. We could stay here. I’m sure we could get along somehow.”

  Josephine, eyes closed, shook her head. “It’s not safe here.”

  “I don’t know. It seems pretty safe to me. It’s not like we’ve seen any guys from Cartel de Gulfo—”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she said. “First hurricane that comes through will level this place. I’ve heard things from my bosses. Haiti’s gone. Jamaica’s holding on by a thread.”

  Isaac sighed.

  “Besides,” Josephine said, “once Odyne realizes what I did, they’ll look for us. They’ll want to kill me.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Believe me, I wish I wasn’t.”

  Isaac slumped into a wicker chair in the corner.

  “You don’t think we’re going to make it, do you?” Josephine asked.

  “T
hat’s not it,” he said, but it was.

  ****

  The next three days passed in a sleepy haze. Alex showed up regularly, offering food, juice, decrepit paperbacks, conversation. He didn’t ask for money; he said something about the collapse of capitalism and not missing that shit. More than anything it seemed he wanted to talk. His Spanish was pretty bad, he said, even after these three years, and there weren’t too many people on the island who spoke English. Isaac would have liked him better if it weren’t for his obvious and unrelenting interest in Josephine. Not that he was overt about it, and not that Isaac wasn’t used to men being interested in his wife, but it got under his skin nevertheless.

  ****

  Friday morning dawned sunny and warm. Josephine put the room back in order while Isaac took inventory of their meager belongings and counted their cash. Alex had told them to expect that passage to Cancun would cost anywhere between six and seven hundred dollars each. At the high end it would leave them tapped out, something Isaac avoided thinking about.

  They left the room not long after dawn. Alex was waiting by the pool in his favorite deck chair, pretending to read a Yoga Journal. He greeted them with a sad half-smile.

  “Can I get you anything else before you go?” he asked, and then before they could answer, “You should take some water. Do you want some eggs? Won’t take long to make.”

  Isaac almost said no before Josephine could say yes. “Eggs would be great.”

  Alex showed them into the reception area, where he fried the eggs in a skillet over a little fireplace. “Have to keep the windows open,” he said. “Flue’s busted.” The walls were brightly painted with a mural of sea turtles, and the concrete floor was scattered with little mosaics. Alex handed Isaac and Josephine a plate of eggs to share, and they ate in silence.

  “Hold on,” Alex said before they were done. “I have something you might be able to use.” He disappeared through a door behind the reception desk. A few moments later he returned, carrying a handgun by its muzzle in one hand, a box of ammunition in the other. He handed both to Isaac.

  Isaac felt a sudden stab of empathy for the man, coupled with gratitude and a deep sadness. He had to fight not to cry. “Don’t tell me this is your only gun.”

  “God, no. There are still a ton of American guns down here, don’t worry.”

  Isaac nodded and tucked the gifts away in their backpack.

  “Alex,” Josephine said, “why don’t you come with us?”

  “To Cancun?” Alex laughed.

  “Yeah. You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Wouldn’t they want you?”

  Alex shook his head, smiling.

  “Why not?” Isaac asked.

  Alex shrugged.

  “This island won’t be around forever,” Isaac said, thinking of what Josephine told him.

  “It’s all right,” Alex said. “Nothing will.”

  ****

  The boat to Cancun arrived around nine. Three sailors stood on deck, tossing boxes into the open arms of some locals. Isaac had been expecting something much larger. This was a speedboat, running on some kind of vegetable oil or biodiesel concoction, judging from the smell.

  One of the sailors, a young shirtless guy with long dreads, locked eyes with Isaac. “You wanna go to Cancun?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got money?”

  “Yes...”

  “How much you have?”

  “One thousand,” Isaac lied.

  The man shrugged. “Okay. Sure.”

  Isaac swallowed and smiled, then reached into the bag and peeled off all but four of the remaining hundred dollar bills.

  “You know it’s like a two day trip, okay?”

  Isaac nodded, although to be honest he hadn’t realized it was that long.

  “Okay. Get on.”

  ****

  Before they left, the other two men got off the boat, changing places with two younger guys, but dreadlocks guy stayed. Then they were off.

  After only one hour on the speedboat Isaac was starting to regret coming on board. The sea was much choppier than the sound, and the sun was relentless. The little scraps of skin left uncovered by Josephine’s lab coveralls—her neck, her hands, her face, her ankles-- were already bright pink. Isaac worried about her getting sun poisoning, heatstroke, skin cancer. But she didn’t complain; in fact, despite the rearing and pitching of the waves, she seemed happier than she’d been on the little island. Every so often he’d watch her eyes go to the backpack, and he could almost hear her thinking about the little flash drive. Their second-most precious cargo.

  As morning gave way to afternoon, clouds came out and it started to rain. Isaac heard thunder in the distance, and wondered if they should stop for safety’s sake, but dreadlocks said nothing of it and the crew continued on.

  They didn’t talk. Josephine read a science fiction novel Alex had given her, and Isaac checked his watch obsessively, allowing himself a mouthful of water every hour, reminding Josephine to take a drink every fifteen minutes.

  Soon after darkness fell the crew beached the boat. Only yards from the waves were several unoccupied huts and some weather-worn fire circles. A waypoint for fishermen, maybe. They spent the night there, Isaac and Josephine sleeping on the sandy wooden floor of a hut that seemed older than civilization.

  Isaac left his arm under Josephine’s neck long after both it and she fell asleep. He dreamed of nausea.

  It was still raining when he woke up. He forced himself back on to the boat with dread. He tried to focus on Josephine, whose attitude was somehow even brighter than before, despite thirst and hunger. But the boat made that difficult. Soon he was staring at the horizon doing deep breathing to keep from vomiting. It continued like that until mid-afternoon, when they reached the vast, crumbling port of Cancun.

  The marina was foul. The water was thick with trash and dead animals, not all aquatic. Personal watercraft of all kinds, from large yachts to tiny sailboats, were crammed haphazardly against the docks. Men with submachine guns patrolled the perimeter.

  It took the crew an hour to find a space to dock. Isaac had never imagined he would prefer staying on board to getting off, but the smell of burning trash and human shit coming from landside made him deeply apprehensive. He was at once deeply grateful for Alex’s pistol in his backpack and totally positive it would not be enough.

  “Do you know where the, uh, the Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville place is?” Isaac asked dreadlocks, feeling like a fool. According to Alex, that was where the guy from the university liked to hang out.

  “It’s down Kulkukan,” he said, pointing. “On the thin island. Pretty far. Next to that shrimp place. From the American movie.”

  “Bubba Gump?” Isaac asked sheepishly.

  “Yeah, that’s it. And, uh, be careful.”

  ****

  The walk took forever. Isaac’s knowledge of urban survival situations told him to avoid eye contact whenever possible, which often meant looking at the ground. More than once he looked down to find human remains in various states of decomposition, just rotting on the street. Looming along either side of the pavement were countless high-rise luxury hotels, more or less intact, some windows shattered, all windows dark. The farther they got down the ‘long island’, the fewer people they saw in the streets. The air got quieter and quieter until all they could hear were waves. Dead silence.

  Inside Isaac’s head, that Jimmy Buffett song was playing on repeat.

  Sure enough, they found Margaritaville on the sound side next to Bubba Gump Shrimp. The plate glass windows and doors along the outside of the restaurant were all busted, and the interior was dark. Isaac and Josephine stepped inside, crushing broken glass under the soles of their work boots.

  “Hello?” Josephine called.

  Isaac pulled the backpack off his shoulders and put his hand inside, seizing the handle of the gun just in case.

  No one answered.

  “Hello?” Josephine called again.

  No answer
.

  “Shit.”

  Isaac heard a door slam across the street. A man was leaving the side entrance of one of the many abandoned hotels. He crossed the street towards them, grinning.

  “Man” was perhaps too strong a word, Isaac thought as he drew closer. This was a kid, early twenties at most. Maybe even a teenager. His black hair fell into his eyes and he had a spotty beard. His limbs all seemed too long, the joints too thick.

  “Hey!” he called from a few yards away. “You two from Odyne?”

  Isaac cursed internally. Was it that obvious?

  “Yeah,” said Josephine. “Are you the guy from the University?”

  “Yes! Word’s spreading, I guess? That’s great. Come on inside,” he said, hopping through a window and pulling out two chairs from a table. He sat down on a stool from the great circular bar that dominated the center of the place. His left foot tapped incessantly against a rung.

  Josephine took a seat. Isaac reluctantly pulled his hand out of the backpack, sans pistol, and sat down across from her.

  “I’m Steven,” he said, waving his hand. “And yeah, as you mentioned, I’m here from the University. Let me tell you a little about what I’m here to do.”

  Isaac folded his arms across his chest and leaned backwards.

  “Lots of people just like you, who got out before the mortality rate really spiked, are trying to make their way back to the States, hoping to make a life for themselves. We’re really excited about that. We’ve got to look towards the future and start to rebuild, right?”

  Josephine nodded.

  “Well, we at the University never left. We stuck it out and dealt with the outbreak on our own, even after the government up and disappeared,” Steven said. “And now we’re trying to help people just like you return to America and help us with our mission.”

  “Your mission?” Isaac asked.

  “We want to protect human knowledge for the future,” Steven said. “Things might seem bad right now, but eventually civilization will rebuild itself. We want to be ready for that. We don’t want to get thrown back into another Dark Age. We don’t want to lose all the progress humanity made in the last hundred years.”