by Kypers, Ryan
“Toast?” I asked. Chelsea nodded as I pulled apart two frozen pieces of bread and threw then into the toaster. It was kind of amazing. There was death and destruction running wild through the world and my girlfriend and I were sitting in my kitchen eating soup and toast. It was nice to know that we had a quiet haven all to ourselves.
We finished the soup relatively fast. The late fall air had given us a chill which the soup removed, warming deep into the body. It tasted good, though the small bits of clam were not satisfying and left much to be desired.
I placed both bowls in the sink and began to wash them, “Dessert?” I heard Chelsea say from behind me. My pants tightened. I turned to see Chelsea holding a box with an Entenminn’s label for a pastry cake. Thank god for preservatives.
My pants loosened again as Chelsea started cutting the cake in a very non-sexy way, though I am not sure if there is a sexy way to cut cake. I now had something to look up on the internet later.
Chelsea cut up two even pieces as I put on water to boil. She placed them on napkins and I got out more forks. I also pulled out two mugs and loaded each with a fresh teabag which Chelsea managed to grab in the super store.
We got a few bites into the cake when the teapot began to whistle. “OUCH!” I yelled as I stupidly grabbed the top of the metal teapot over a flame with my bare hand. “That was not bright,” I said as I turned on the sink faucet to run water over my throbbing palm.
Chelsea got up to see the damage. It was not too bad. A bit of reddening across my palm but nothing that would not heal after a night’s rest. “You’ll be fine,” she said, turning off the burner, something else that I forgot to do. She opened up the lower cabinet drawer and pulled out an oven mitt. She slid it on and poured the hot water. “That’s how it’s done.”
“A woman would know. OUCH!” She smacked me on my bad arm. “C’mon! I’m only kidding.”
“Me too,” she said as she placed the teapot back on the stove burners. “It’s just a love tap, or are you too wimpy for that.”
I had no response. Chelsea bested me at my own sarcastic game. I merely gathered up the remaining pride that I could muster and sat back down, stuffing my face with cake and washing it down with tea.
We finished and I started to put the plates into the kitchen sink when I heard a noise. “That cake was good-“ I cut Chelsea off with a wave of my hand, pointing to my ear for her to catch on. The noise sounded like a grinding, sort of an object rubbing against pavement with a slight buzzing following it.
“Do you hear that?” I asked in a whisper.
Chelsea nodded, “Do you think it is a contaminated?”
“Can’t tell,” I whispered back, and I could not. “It sounds so familiar though, like something that I used to hear tons of times and recently too, but I don’t anymore.” The noise faded but we kept on listening. With a light clatter, I put the plates and forks into the sink and walked my way into the kitchen, old wooden flooring cracking and squeaking under my feet.
I made my way to the front windows which overlooked the porch and poked my head between the curtains as I did when the doomed lady decided to run past our house. All that I saw was darkness. The moon had not gotten any brighter, but actually darker. The clouds were completely covering the moon from all angles. The only thing that shone through was the light illumination in the clouds, but nothing significant. I almost dared to turn the porch lights on to see what was happening on outside, but that would have been suicide. There was no reason to call all of the contaminated in the area to my house when there was not enough tea and cake for everyone.
The noise was coming again, growing louder and louder by the second. I looked up and down the street but could barely see anything. I felt Chelsea’s hand on my shoulder, no doubt looking over it to try and glimpse the commotion, which was only a commotion because it was uncommon.
It was approaching faster and faster now, the noise becoming more recognizable, almost like a cat purring angrily when suddenly two lights emerged from the darkness, two dull and dark orange lights. “A car? A CAR!” I practically yelled to Chelsea. “It must be looking for something, for someone!” I began to get excited. “Maybe the military finally returned, answering our prayers!” I was not religious, and I do not know why I said that.
“In the middle of the night?” she replied.
“Under the cover of darkness, maybe?” I asked, though I felt deep in my gut how farfetched the idea of the military returning was. If they came back it would be with a whole convoy, nor would they risk searching for survivors individually. That was how the stupid horror movies did things, not the logical individual. “Should we signal them?” I asked her.
“Why ask me?”
“I want to include you on decision making, since you are currently healthier than I am.”
“Oh? Not because of equal rights of men and women?” she spat back. “Or maybe the fact that you are finally beginning to understand that I make the better decisions, such as the cake?”
“Chelsea, I love you, but not now, okay?” I said with a smile on my face.
She frowned, “Fine. What do you think about this guy?” she said as the lights passed.
“I expect he’ll pass again, assuming that he is searching for someone,” I restrained myself on that stupid saying about what happens when one assumes. “He could be someone looking for us, maybe one of my parents or someone that we knew who got stuck in town.”
Chelsea put her thinking face on, “I don’t think it would be a parent, only because I heard that the military wasn’t letting anyone in a safe zone out again under any circumstances, and they wouldn’t come if the area was still dangerous. I think that we would have noticed someone still living in the area, as we’ve been making quite a ruckus in the field for the past few weeks now.”
I nodded in agreement, “Do you think that they would be dangerous?”
She waited to reply, thinking for a long time. Chelsea thought for so long that I was able to hear the car coming down the street again, the dark orange headlights barely illuminating the road. “He might be dangerous, but we have the advantage of surprise.”
“Okay then, I’ll signal him with the porch lights. Get the weapons ready,” I said as I moved to hit the light switch for the porch. I couldn’t risk the contaminated seeing it, so I had to wait until the very last moment that the car could get a glimpse of the lights. Chelsea arrived shortly after with the wrench and a bat in her hands. “Why the wrench?” I asked.
“If he is dangerous, I don’t want to risk him grabbing it from you mid swing,” she pointed to the iron of the wrench. “If he tries, this will shatter his hand or anything that he will try to block with.” I could not argue with that.
“Here goes nothing!” I said, my hand flicking the light switch on then off then on then off in less than a second. My head poked above the front door to look out the window. The dim lights were curving into the driveway and were quickly cut off. The engine was running for a second but was sputtering out shortly after the lights were. It was so silent that I was able to hear the click of the door latch followed by grinding steel as it opened. “You ready?” I asked Chelsea. She was standing behind where the door would open. I would greet our new guest.
She nodded, “Ready and willing to smash a face in.” I loved her.
Footsteps echoed through the night as the familiar sound of shoe on wood rang out. It was not loud, just recognizable. They came to a stop in front of the door. “Hey,” I heard whispered through. “You in there?”
“Who are you?” I raised my voice slightly, just enough to hear past the thick front door and into the night.
“You wouldn’t recognize me,” it said, sounding slightly worried. “Can I please come in? I promise that I’m unarmed. All of my weapons are in the car.”
I looked to Chelsea for approval. She gave me the nod to proceed. My hand gripped the round door handle and pulled it gently back. I waved the wrench in front of the screen door to make sure that it was the first
thing that the person saw.
“Woah! No need for that,” he said, pulling open the front screen door. He closed it behind him gently followed by the front door. The man was true to his word. I could see no signs of any weapon on him. Chelsea popped out behind the door and he startled back. “Oh! So the two of you are still alive?”
“How do you know us?!” Chelsea exclaimed, bat raised. If the man made the wrong move, he was totally fucked. “Who are you, now!” She was so sexy when she demanded.
“How rude of me,” he said, bowing down. “My name is Zach, and I have made my way here all of the way from Buffalo, New York. But you probably know me best as Buffalant909.”
Wut.
Chapter 13
The three of us sat around the kitchen table, risking the ceiling fan light only because it had adjustable brightness. Chelsea and I also covered any near windows with blankets to prevent any stray light from escaping the confines of the house. A light texture of warm and humid air surrounded us as I had already put more water on the stove to boil.
Zach sat across from me and Chelsea perpendicular to us. The wooden table was empty accept for the opened cake with two pieces taken out. Chelsea quickly moved the cake to the kitchen counter, clearing up more space.
“Wow, the cake’s not a lie,” Zach said, his voice on the higher side. He sat just a little taller than Chelsea with a mixture of white and black in his hair and a baby face to finish the odd build. He looked to be between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, minus the lack of facial hair combined with the Italian in his nose.
“So,” I piped up. The night thus far had been an abundance of awkward silences. “Why are you here?” I said, rolling the wrench slowly across the floor to remind him that it was there. I did not mean to be hostile, but I did.
Zach looked into my eyes. It was not a look of anger, but one of pain and struggle. “I did everything that I possibly could to get here. Buffalo had practically starved me out. It’s a real shit show out there. Contaminated are all over the place, running amok as if they own the city. Well they do now own the city. I don’t know whether there was anyone else in Buffalo besides me, though there probably was somewhere; it is a big city. As it was, I had two options: flee north to Canada and hope for the best, or to find one of the eight. The only thing better than one of the eight would be two, which is why I decided on coming here. Besides, you guys are the closest of the group.”
“How did you know where to find us?” Chelsea asked, the quickness in her voice almost sounded desperate. “If you found us then that means others can too.”
Zach sat back in his chair in a relaxing stance, legs loosely at his sides, “Relax. I found you by finding your internet IP address and tracing it back to here, which is certainly not easy. Fortunately I have been gifted in the arts of the personal computer and was able to do it.”
“Yes, but it being tough to do doesn’t mean that others can’t do it,” she countered.
“Precisely. If I had not been in a powered zone, I would have had no shot,” he leaned back towards the table, resting his elbows on it with his hands folded. “I tracked you guys through the forum a long time ago, actually I did it with everyone on there, just in case this sort of scenario ever came up. I was only able to do it because I was the one who set up the forums and have access to that kind of information for banning purposes and such, so unless there’s another forum admin, you should be fine.”
Chelsea relaxed a little in her chair, breathing a light sigh of relief. The water began to whistle and she got up from her seat to pour it into the three mugs on the counter.
Zach’s story sounded solid, but something was off. It sounded true enough, but some part of it was not fully there. I had always had the strange ability to tell when a person was lying. I guess it was a sort of super power, nothing cool like heat vision or flying, but was perfect for situations like these.
“And?” I questioned him, the wrench grinding against the flooring. My mother would kill me if she knew what I was doing to her precious flooring.
Zach sighed, “You know the wrench is really not necessary. Do you seriously think that a small computer nerd at eighteen years old and greying hair is a threat? Did our month of talking on the forum not earn the slightest bit of trust?”
“You could have warned us that you were coming. We practically smashed your head in when you walked through the door.” Chelsea returned to the table with her trained waitress arms carrying the mugs of hot steaming tea.
“I couldn’t,” he replied, blowing on the tea to cool it. He took a sip and quickly jerked his head back, realizing that it was too hot to drink.
“Why not?” Chelsea asked. “You know that we both visit the forum daily. There were numerous times that you could have tried.”
“It’s not that simple-“
“No, it actually is that simple,” I said, getting annoyed with him dodging questions. There was something strange going on, not necessarily threatening, but something weird. “You could have simply posted in the forums that you were coming or even personal messaged me. C’mon computer man.”
“The power cut out three days ago,” he said, causing a deafening silence. It was so quiet that I could have heard the steam coming off of the tea. Chelsea’s back stiffened and her eyes were widening behind her taking a fake sip of the tea just to do something.
“What did you just say?” I asked in disbelief.
Zach blew on the tea and took a sip to clear his throat, “The power cut out of Buffalo, New York three days ago.” He took another sip before placing the mug down onto the table. His hands cupped it to stay warm.
“You’re saying that the military was overrun? Or that something bad happened at the plant?” I asked.
“I’m saying that the power cut out. I have no clue as to why that happened, but I don’t think that it was something bad that happened to the plant as I heard no explosions or anything of the sort. The closest power plant to Buffalo is a few miles north, but I can’t be sure if something bad did happen, the bad sort of thing that the contaminated would do.” Another silence followed.
Zach finally broke it, “I have a theory that the military abandoned the plant. Though I most likely was not, there is a chance that I was the last person who occupied the Buffalo area and the plant was simply shut down to conserve resources and military men. Though the flip side to that is where I lived was too far away to hear any gunshots.”
Just what I needed to end that interesting bit of information. He had no idea what caused the collapse of power in his area and was practically saying that the same thing was going to happen to ours. I did not know what was worse: not knowing why it was happening or that it could happen to us any time, leaving us totally unprepared.
“What else?” Chelsea asked.
“Chels? He did just tell us a lot,” I defended Zach for whatever reason. I rested the wrench against the last open chair, making a notion that Zach had earned some trust, but that the wrench was always at arm’s length.
“I told you everything-“
“No you didn’t,” She cut him off. “If you really were shut off of power, you had far greater chances of meeting civilization in Canada. The border patrol may still be active, and if not there would be some way that you could bunker down off of the border patrol’s resources.”
He was in a corner now, with nowhere to run. Zach took another sip of his tea to buy him some time. “Okay, fine. There’s more.” He took another sip. “Canada is gone, well the places that you think you knew. The only areas are the ones that weren’t hospitable before, ironic actually. I stumbled onto a Canadian website that was posted as someone was being overrun by the contaminated,” he paused for a second, regaining his breath. “I think that he was starved to death, cornered in his house by the contaminated and not wanting to become one of them. He updated the blog for a bit before finally checking out. Said he couldn’t do it anymore. Posted that he opened the window-“
“We get it,”
I cut him off. The last thing that the depressing mood needed was suicide stories around our little campfire. “Why didn’t you say that before?”
“It’s a little bit depressing, don’t you think?” he asked, draining the remains of his tea, but not taking his hands off of it. “That’s not all though.”
“What else?” Chelsea asked in a much kinder tone.
He took a deep breath, “Well, to be honest, I was going to save this until you trusted me a bit more because it’s kind of farfetched.”
“Zach, there are blood thirsty monsters running amok trying to turn any flesh bearing thing into one of them by drinking their blood and gouging on their bodies. There’s no way it is any more fucking farfetched than that unless you have seen a rainbow contaminated running around leading people to its pot of gold,” I finished, clarifying my position of the topic.
“Alright, alright already,” He said, waving his hand through the air. “I guess you are aware that God is playing a game with us, right?”
I nodded, not knowing whether to agree or disagree but doing it anyway.
“Well, you remember how we all, us eight, planned on meeting in Kansas if this contamination thing ever got solved, because it was the fairest place for all of us?”
Chelsea and I nodded, remembering the oddity of the post.
“Well maybe that isn’t as random as you think,” he said, his face becoming more smug but not too arrogant. “A government rep contacted me, or I did him. He said that any survivors that I knew of should go to their respective power plants immediately as they could. It is the closest way to get military protection and a safe passage to the last haven in America. Can you guess where that haven is?” he asked.
“Kansas,” I replied. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“Nope. No shitting. Apparently the contaminated don’t like to move too far inland,” he said. “Kansas City has yet to see one, according to him.”
“How do you know that you can trust this guy?” Chelsea asked.