From Oblivion's Ashes

by Nyman, Michael E. A.

  She nodded. “I used mud from the ravine, and dog poo, and covered myself all over so that I could look like a piece of dirt, and managed to sneak home. I hadn’t had my insulin shot, but mostly, I just wanted to find my mom and dad. I didn’t have to go far; my home is right next to the park. People were running everywhere, and I got knocked over twice. One man who knocked me down got attacked right after. Then there was another man. He had a sword, and he chopped off the head of a zombie who was attacking a woman.”

  Marshal closed his eyes, knowing where this was headed. “It didn’t stop the zombie, did it?”

  “It stopped to pick up its head. The second time the man hit it, the sword only cut in about a centimeter and got stuck. Another zombie got him while he was trying to pull it out. I could hear his bones being crunched as I crawled away.”

  Marshal nodded, and then went back to scrubbing.

  “I finally got home,” she said, her voice falling to a whisper again. “Mom and Dad were gone. There was torn clothing all over the floor and holes in the walls. I could hear something moving upstairs, smashing things. At first I thought it might be my Mom and Dad, but… it wasn’t them. So I grabbed my emergency kit and got my bottle of insulin from the fridge and ran back to the ravine in the park.”

  Tears were in her eyes again.

  “I… I ate bread from the hot dog cart,” she said, trying not to cry as grief slowly overtook her. “My Mom and Dad were dead, and I…. The bread… when it went bad, I… I started sneaking out of the park. Everyone was dead, and there were zombies everywhere, especially everywhere there was food. I got good at the sneaking part, and I was giving myself injection every day…”

  She burst into terrible sobs, looking up at him with red, wet eyes and snot dribbling down out of her nose.

  “Marshal,” she said, “I’m going to die soon, aren’t I?”

  For a moment, Marshal had no idea how to respond. Yes. Yes, she was going to die. She was dead that first day, whether a zombie got hold of her or not. She was a type one diabetic. She needed insulin. Without insulin, which enables the transference of glucose from the blood cells to body tissue, her blood sugar would shoot up, causing a spectrum of horrible and painful side effects, up to and including seizures, coma, and ultimately, death. Insulin injections were a constant necessity for someone like Angie.

  And that was it. There was no avoiding it. Insulin was a manufactured medication, synthesized in factory laboratories for distribution. Once opened, a vial of insulin was good for about thirty days. Of course, if it wasn’t unsealed, then the stuff was good until the expiration date on the label, which could sometimes run for as long as a couple of years. If it was kept refrigerated.

  Marshal felt helpless. Once upon a time, he remembered, insulin didn’t have to be synthesized. They harvested it from cattle, or calf embryos, or something like that. Not that it mattered. Marshal didn’t have any of those in his back room either.

  Her crying began to ease.

  “I think,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder, “that you have to be just about the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

  After that, there wasn’t much else to say. The weakened insulin appeared to be doing its job but a combination of the days she’d spent on her own and the aftermath of her hyperglycemic reaction had left her exhausted. Marshal picked her up and carried her off to her bed, and tucked her in.

  “You’re not alone, Angie,” he told her. “We’ll tackle this problem together. And whatever happens, at least your not covered in dog poop anymore. Now, try to get some sleep.”

  He left her, closing the door behind him, and went off to talk it over with a bottle of Crown Royale. Their discussion went on through the rest of the day and into the night.

  Sometime during the night, Marshal looked up and saw the clock.

  2:37am. Like it mattered.

  Time. Just another way the world is telling you to fuck off.

  Down in the streets below, a thousand zombies loitered in the shadows, rippling like the waves on a poison sea. Immune to time, they would pour into this apartment if they could, this air pocket in the walls of Hell, and the clock would tick two twenty-eight. And then, at the End of Time, after time itself ceased to have meaning, the clock would then tick two twenty-nine, then two thirty.

  Marshal took another drink of some flavor of rum. Captain Morgan? Captain Morgan. The Crown Royale had disappeared some time ago, and the rum was the first tree in the forest of bottles up at the bar that Marshal could get his hands on. He’d stopped using the glass at some point.

  Mugwarts. Mugwarts? Mugwumps.

  Standing by the window, with the bottle dangling from his fingers, Marshal contemplated Mugwumps for a few, bewildered seconds. Mugwumps? Seriously, what in the fuck were Mugwumps supposed to be anyway? The Smiling Magician? Bridge Trolls? The absurdity of human accomplishment, in a nutshell.

  And yet, Angie…

  A pain stabbed Marshal in the throat at the thought of the name, threatening to choke him up. A splash of Captain Morgan doused the fire.

  …that little girl used the messages of… of fairy tales to outsmart a force that… well… ‘outsmart’… the Lurching Ogres were pretty dumb. No. Lurching…? ZOMBIES! Fucking zombies… the little girl… goddam fairy tales were messing with his head.

  Standing next to the window, he felt himself sag, and then he was pressed up against the glass. The cool glass surface was like a gentle rain against his skin. Outside in the netherworld, the moon was a shining silver disc, casting a faint, dusting of illumination across the new lords of the Earth. Occasionally, one would crawl up over the Dollar Den sign, searching the rooftops, the alleyways, the nooks and crannies, for any sign of human life.

  The thing was… the... the thing was that Angie… she deserved better. When he thought of all the things she’d already endured, how she’d fought to stay alive, even with the odds stacked against her… If there was a human spirit, a part of us fighting like hell against the dying of the light, it was her! Even with the guarantee of death, that little girl would not give up. She chased the impossible dream of something she knew she could never have. She knew she was doomed to die, and still she hadn’t stopped fighting, struggling for every last breath she could squeeze from this life. Her battle had brought her to Marshal’s doorstep, and against all odds, she could spend her last few hours in a happier end than she would have had if she had simply given up.

  Marshal raised the bottle of rum in mock toast. Human spirit!

  She deserved better. We deserve better.

  He looked down at the shifting darkness in the street below. Another swallow from a sympathetic Captain Morgan soothed the beast that threatened to inflame him.

  So. What was she? A symbol of futility, or was she something bigger? The disparity between the two possibilities consumed Marshal. Either way, he felt ashamed. Ashamed at his own weakness, ashamed at his own despair. Ashamed that, while he was contemplating the end of the world, this little twelve-year-old girl had continued fighting, had just refused to give up the precious gift of life. Even knowing that it was a hopeless battle, this girl had, against the odds, refused to fucking die.

  He turned his gaze upwards from the monstrous sea of death below, and took in the still twinkling lights of the remaining cityscape, the automated systems, the green power surviving even the burnt-out fires of living humanity. They continued to twinkle and mar the perfect darkness of the night. Far, far fewer than there once had been, they were the remnants, the smoldering embers of the civilization that died. Soon, they too would fail, and humanity would become a leftover ruin, an archeological study for some far, future intelligence. They would sift through our ashes, and try to extract our secrets, recover our soul, and they would shake their heads, and in few humiliating seconds, sum up all that we were in some fucking fortune cookie of meaning.

  They would never know or appreciate the significance of someone like Angie.

  Another pull at the bottle.
/>   The lights. Marshal searched his memory. They reminded him of something. Looking at them could deceive you. Once upon a time, lights in the night had meaning. You could look at them and know they meant that there was a live human on the other end.

  Now, they were illusions, automated leftovers from another time. False hopes. Twinkling, beautiful lies in the darkness that could seduce you into following them, believing in them. And if you did believe in them, they would lead you to your death.

  Lights in the night.

  Willow-the-Wisp.

  Another fairy creature. A bad one. The slayer of dreamers.

  Hah! Marshal took another pull of the rum. Take that… fuckin’ Mugwumps, whatever you are. Believe in the Willow-the-Wisp, follow the beautiful lie, and the fairy tale will kill you. The lesson… the lesson is to not believe, to… to accept the inevitable.

  Humanity was going to die. Just accept it. The lights were lies.

  The bottle slipped from his fingers, hit the floor without breaking, the contents dribbling out and onto the carpet. Marshal ignored it, his world swimming, even with his eyes closed. With his face pressed against the glass, his hands and body felt numb, weightless. Tears bled from his eyes, wetting the cold hard surface.

  Angie was going to die. The lights… the lights… like the apartment…

  The apartment. The lights.

  Something tugged at him. For a moment, floating in an alcoholic euphoria, he thought to ignore it, but… an image of Angie, emaciated and still willing to fight, shamed him into not letting the thought go.

  Outside, a heavy, thick cloud blotted out the Moon, threatening rain. Invisible against the night, the faint moonlight disappeared, leaving only the false lights of the cityscape to twinkle against the darkness.

  No! Don’t let it go! The lights… they meant something.

  And then he had it.

  Rothman’s!

  Oh my fucking god! Rothman’s!

  And there was a storm coming!

  With the last ounce of his wits, he stumbled towards the bar, accidentally kicking the rum bottle across the carpet. Not caring, he simply pushed on, collapsed against the couch, pulled himself up again, and fought his way to the counter.

  Pen and paper. With drunken fingers, he wrote one word on the back of a Foodland flyer. He wouldn’t forget. He had to remember! The lights were not meaningless! He just had to follow the Willow-the-Wisp, believe in it. The pen moved almost of its own accord. When it was done, he studied the word with blurry eyes until he was sure he had it right.

  Rothman’s. And there was a storm coming.

  He would follow the Willow-the-Wisp. If he was right, it could save Angie and him both. If he was wrong…

  He staggered against the couch, tumbled over its back onto the soft, inviting cushions, and everything went dark.

  Chapter Five: Day 17: Rebuilding Humanity

  The next morning, Angie was sick again, vomiting up into the toilet. Marshal joined in, alternating with her as he kneeled on the floor.

  “My insulin,” she gasped between moments of retching.

  “My head,” Marshal said, after it was his turn.

  “Do you have diabetes too?” Angie asked, drool hanging from her bottom lip.

  “Only diabetes of the brain,” Marshal answered, his head pounding from the hangover. He stood up with difficulty. “Let me get your stuff. I’ll be right back.”

  Ten minutes later, they sat together, each suckling a big glass of water and enjoying the Art of Not Moving. Storm clouds had rolled in from the south to blot out the morning sun with a grayness that only served to accentuate their mood. The place reeked with the stench of alcohol, broken by the faint scent of brewing coffee.

  “I’ll make breakfast,” Marshal promised, limp and unmoving against the back of the couch with a wet cloth draped over his forehead and eyes. “Just give me a few minutes.”

  “It’s okay,” said Angie. She picked up the controller and turned on the TV. With a small frown at the sight of Merry Melodies, she asked, “Can I put in something else?”

  Marshal lifted a corner of the wet cloth so he could eye her.

  “You’re looking better,” he said. “Did that last dose do the trick?”

  Angie nodded, and got up to stare at Marshal’s collection of movies. “A little bit. I feel more normal now. That was my last dose, wasn’t it?”

  Something tugged at Marshal, and he sat up and pulled away the cloth with a sigh.

  “Ooh!” Angie exclaimed with delight, snatching up a DVD case. “Harry Potter! Can we watch Harry Potter? Please, please, please!”

  “That,” Marshal said, pulling himself to his feet, “is an awesome idea. Can’t think of a better time to have a marathon, right? Put it in and I’ll go make a gluten-friendly breakfast.”

  With a squeal of happiness, Angie popped in the DVD.

  Heading to the kitchen, Marshal noticed the messy scribble on the bar counter.

  He squinted to make out the near-unintelligible script.

  Rothman’s.

  He put the paper aside and scanned his cupboards for low carb, low sugar, low starch, and found it sorely lacking. Maybe he could cook up some of the frozen chicken breast and mix in some more canned vegetables. In the end, no matter what he cooked, it would be a losing game, garnering maybe a few more hours at best. Angie had hardly any fat reserves left to keep her going, so starvation as a means of keeping her blood sugar balanced…

  He sagged against the counter.

  Finally, he pulled a can of green beans off the shelf, hoping it was the right choice. He wasn’t a diabetic himself, and while he had learned a little about the disease from his mother, that was long ago and he was far from an expert. The only thing he was sure of was that just about everything was going to increase her blood sugar, some foods faster than others. There was no way around it. Stuff that would kill her, paradoxically, was still the nutrition she needed to survive.

  Rothman’s? Why had he written…?

  The can of beans hit the floor with a clatter.

  “Marshal?” Angie’s voice sounded worried. The opening music to the Philosopher’s Stone was playing in the background, and on the screen, Dumbledore was completing his stoic walk down the street of Privet Lane, blinking out the streetlamps one by one.

  Marshal ignored her, his hangover gone in the sudden burst of adrenalin and hope, and he ran to the window to study the sky. Frothy, black clouds loomed above, and further off, even darker clouds were making their way towards them.

  “We have a storm,” he murmured.

  “What?”

  He turned to face her, his face flushed with excitement.

  “We have a storm!” He punched the air. “A big one by the looks of it, one that could go all day and all night!”

  Angie paused the movie, and got up to join him at the window, but Marshal rushed past her to the bar. Grabbing up a pen, he started to scribble on the paper.

  “You’re fine now,” he muttered, “which gives us at least, what, twelve hours? If we starve you, or at least, minimize your intake, the chicken could come in handy for that….then maybe we could stretch that into twenty-four hours. That’s plenty of time, if we get it, but it was a weak dosage, so… eleven blocks? If we get to leave in the next four or five hours… Jesus! That’s cutting it close.”

  “What’s going on, Marshal?” Angie asked.

  “Rothman’s Pharmacy,” he told her, picking up and showing her the scribbled note he’d made when he was drunk. “It’s a drug store eleven blocks from here. Six years ago, the neighborhood had a four-day blackout. It wasn’t supposed to last that long, and they didn't bother with contingencies, so they wound up losing something like fifteen thousand dollars of drugs and other perishables.

  “Anyway, the insurance company paid for it, but insisted that the pharmacy put in a back up system if they… none of that’s important now. The point is, Rothman’s made a big deal of it in the press, installing huge banks of solar p
anels on their rooftop and bragging that, with the use of green power, they were immune to blackouts. Rothman’s was a really big drug store, and they were a distribution center, meaning that the drug companies shipped their perishable drugs to them for packaging and prescription to service the entire area. After they installed their green power, a whole bunch of people with prescriptions who had been affected by the blackout switched over their regular shipments to them.”

  He threw down the pen and grinned at her.

  “In other words,” he said, “if there’s anywhere in the city that still has fresh insulin and the refrigeration to keep it from going bad, it’s Rothman’s. And it’s only eleven city blocks away.”

  Angie blinked slowly, then turned her head to look at the window.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Marshal said, nodding. “Might as well be the Moon, right? It would take us… I’d guess about an hour, to walk that far even before the outbreak. Except that we do have one other thing going for us. There’s a storm coming.”

  Angie was stunned. “What… what are…?”

  He went down on one knee, gently holding her by both shoulders so he could look up into her eyes.

  “Angie, I can’t make any promises,” he told her. “This could just as easily get us killed before we even reach our destination. We could make it Rothman’s and find everything smashed all to pieces, or find insulin and die on the way back. There are about a thousand ways it could all go wrong. But ,if it works, then we could find the insulin prescriptions for a hundred people. Properly taken care of, there could be enough there to keep you alive for two, maybe even three more years! After that, well, who knows? Maybe the zombies are dead by then, and we go out and find a book that tells us how to get some more by killing a cow or something. The point is, you don’t die tomorrow.”

  He jumped up and ran down the hallway that led to the bedrooms, leaving the bewildered twelve-year-old standing by the bar. After a few minutes, he returned holding a pair of black blankets.

  “Courtesy of the Dollar Den,” he proclaimed with pride. “Look! We cut eyeholes in each of these, and wear black from the waist down. Tonight, with the zombies distracted by the rainstorm, and with plenty of noise to cover up the sound of our footsteps, we should be invisible. The difficult part will be sneaking past wall-to-wall zombies, but we know that they all go outside to stand under the rain, right? Well, if we stay indoors or stick close to the walls where there’s less rain, then there’s a good chance that we can walk a clear path right out of here. Then, once we’re out of range, and with almost every zombie in the area having responded to the Call to Swarm, it should get a lot easier. If we’re lucky and don’t take anything for granted, we could have a clear path all the way to Rothman’s.”