by Cross, Amy
I mentioned Emma earlier. She was the girl I met when I was very young, shortly after the Great Disaster began. I met her, on and off, over a very long period in my life. She came to Morristown with her friend Pierce, having set out from her hometown shortly after the Great Disaster struck. She was a kind, happy girl who seemed very poorly equipped to deal with the growing emergency. I imagine that if the Great Disaster had never happened, Emma would have lived a long and happy life without adventure. But that's not how her life turned out, not at all. She ended up being the one who went up against the anarchists, but that just proves my point: it is often the most 'ordinary' people who prove to be capable of the most extraordinary acts of courage and bravery.
Now that I know I am dying, that I have just a day or two left, I find myself thinking more and more of Emma, Pierce and the others. Back then, we thought that we would soon have electricity again, that the world would quickly get back to normal. But it never did. For example, in the early days we were always waiting for news from Washington. We assumed that, given time, the American government would get a handle on things and would come to tell us what was happening. But ninety years later, there has been no sign of the government. It is as if they simply vanished when the Great Disaster struck.
And I often wonder what things are like in the rest of the world. Oh, when I was young I had such plans to travel to Europe and Asia and Africa. I wanted to see everything and everywhere. But back then, thanks to aeroplane travel, long distances could be covered so quickly. Today, even a trip to from the east to the west coast of the United States is a lifetime achievement, a journey that takes many months by horse. People make fewer big journeys these days, though the few journeys that they do undertake are inevitably grander and more epic.
People ask me if I miss the old days. In truth, I miss the ease of my old life. If you wanted water, you turned on a tap. If you wanted to go to another city, you jumped on a bus or a train. If you wanted to find out an item of knowledge, or you wanted to watch a video, you went online. All those things are gone now. If I want to know a fact about history, I have to go to the library now. The world has changed so much, but in some ways things are the same as ever: fortune still favors the bold, and the brave.
I wonder, is the light truly coming tonight?
Chapter Five
We walk along the highway, figuring we can reach New York by following street signs. At first we walk in silence, sharing a kind of awkwardness that stems from the fact that although we're the same age, we have nothing in common and we've never really spoken before today. Pierce walks a few steps ahead of me, but eventually we start talking about how we grew up in neighboring houses but never really became friends.
“My parents told me to keep away from you,” I say, figuring I might as well be honest. “They said you were weird”.
“Funny,” he says, “my parents said the same thing about you”.
“Why?” I ask, genuinely shocked.
He shrugs. “They said you were too normal”.
We walk a little further. “My Mom said you bite,” I say eventually.
“Not any more,” he replies, turning back to look at me. “Well, not often. I bit of few of my psychiatrists, though, and they all stopped seeing me. Fucking idiots”. He stops suddenly. “Look!”
I turn and see what he's looking at: there's someone else walking on this road, a few hundred meters behind us.
“Great minds think alike,” Pierce says.
“So do idiots,” I say.
We wait, and eventually the other person catches up. It's a girl, about my age and carrying a large backpack. She has long ginger hair and a pale, freckly face, and she's wearing a really girly summer dress. She doesn't look particularly excited to see us, but she stops as she gets close.
“Hi,” says Pierce. “You going to New York too?”
She stares at us for a moment. “Yeah,” she says, with a kind of vacant tone of voice.
Pierce steps towards her and reaches out a hand for her to shake. “Pierce,” he says.
She seems cautious and suspicious, even when it comes to shaking Pierce's hand, which she does reluctantly. “Holly,” she says, eying us both.
“We're going to New York,” Pierce says in a friendly manner. “You going the same way?”
She stares at us for a moment. “Yeah,” she says eventually.
“Exactly,” says Pierce, smiling at me. “See? I told you”.
I nod unenthusiastically before introducing myself to Holly. “Emma,” I say, trying to seem friendly. Really, really trying.
“Hi,” says Holly.
I feel like I recognize her face from somewhere. “I think I've seen you online,” I say. “I think you might be friends with some of my friends”.
“Maybe,” she says, clearly totally uninterested.
“I don't know the exact route,” Pierce says as the three of us turn and start walking, “but I figure we can follow the road signs, and we can look at the stars, and we should get there without too much trouble”. He seems almost hyperactive, like he's trying to impress... someone. But who? Me? Holly? Both of us?
“Let's just keep walking,” Holly says dourly. Wow, she makes me seem like a ray of sunshine.
“I'm thinking it'll take two, maybe three weeks to reach New York,” Pierce says jauntily, leading the way. “By then maybe there'll be some degree of organization. Hell, we can get in at the ground level, maybe help organize. That'd be cool, right?”
He glances back at us, but we don't really respond.
“Pierce is very much enjoying the whole apocalyptic tone of events,” I say.
Holly smiles. Just a little, but enough to tell me that she's at least human.
“I'm not enjoying it,” Pierce says. “I just figure we have to play the cards we're dealt. And this is how things are working out so far. There's no point sitting around twiddling our thumbs, let's get on with stuff”.
Holly turns to me and, unseen by Pierce, mimes sticking her fingers down her throat and vomiting. I laugh. Surprisingly, I think I might actually end up liking Holly.
Later, as it starts to get dark, we realize that we need to find somewhere to sleep. We head off the highway and into the scrub-land by the side of the road, at which point Pierce reveals that he has a sleeping bag in his backpack, but only a single one.
“I guess I'd better give this up to one of you two,” he says, clearly a little reluctant but determined to do the 'right thing' as the only man in the group.
“I'm okay on the ground,” Holly says, sitting down. “But it's gonna get cold. What do we do about heat?”
Pierce smiles and produces a box of matches from his bag. “We build a fire,” he says. “Like they used to do in the old days, right? We'll be warm all night”.
“If we don't burn to death,” Holly mutters.
“It'll be okay,” I say, suddenly finding myself in the surprising position of not being the most pessimistic member of the group. “Pierce knows how to do it, right Pierce?”
Pierce nods, though perhaps a little unconvincingly. “Survival 101”.
As Pierce tries to look like he knows what he's doing, I glance over at Holly. There's something strange about her, but I can't quite explain it. She seems kind of... vacant, as if she's not quite with us. She often seems to be staring into space, and her answers to questions are usually just one or two words, like she's half-asleep all the time. There seems to be nothing proactive about her personality; she just reacts to things, as minimally as possible, and spends the rest of the time just kind of floating along. At first it was cute, but now it's slightly unnerving.
“So where are you from, Holly?” Pierce asks as he digs a small hole in the ground using his hands.
“Back there,” Holly says, staring at the ground.
Pierce glance at me, as if to check if I've also noticed how vacant and blank Holly seems to be. I raise my eyebrows for a moment, to show him that he and I are on the same wavelength.
> “Er, okay,” says Pierce. “It's pretty fucked up what's happened, right?”
No reply.
“So where were you when the plane crashed?”
Holly looks at him. “I was quite near,” she says.
I look at Pierce. “I'm going to find some more wood,” I say, standing up and walking a little way away. I indicate for Pierce to come and join me, and he makes an excuse and heads over.
“What's wrong with her?” I ask.
“World collapsing. People dying. Probably made her a bit sad,” he replies.
“It's more than that,” I say. “There's something not right about her”.
“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” he fires back. “Maybe she saw someone die. Maybe she's never had a fucking aeroplane nearly land on her head before”. He looks over at the back of her head as she sits watching the first flickering of Pierce's attempts at a fire. “So what if she's a bit odd. Doesn't mean she can't come with us. And fuck it, you used to think I was odd”.
“I still think you're odd,” I say. “Sorry, that didn't come out right”.
He smiles. “If it's any consolation, I still think you're odd too”. With that, he turns and heads back over to the fire, which is kind of getting started but is still a long way from being impressive.
I grab a few branches and then head over, but as I walk behind Holly I spot something in her hair that grabs my attention. I stop and stare, but I can't see it now. Stepping back a pace, I see it again: something metallic, catching the light of the moon. Not sure what to make of it, I walk over to Pierce and drop the branches by the fire, then I circle around and go behind Holly again. When I'm standing in the right place, I can see the little metal thing, like a triangle, sticking out from under the hair on the back of her head.
“What's that in your hair?” I ask.
Pierce looks up. Holly doesn't say anything.
“Holly,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“What's that thing in your hair?”
There's a pause. “I don't know,” she says with the same blank, listless tone.
Pierce gets up and slowly walks around to join me. He can tell from the look on my face that this is something serious.
“What the fuck is that?” I ask him.
He shakes his head.
“Hey, Holly,” he says, “you mind if I take a look?”
Another pause. “Sure,” she says.
Pierce steps closer, leans in and parts her hair. “Jesus!” he says, stepping back, a shocked look on his face.
“What?” I ask, glancing down at Holly, who doesn't seem to have reacted.
I can see from Pierce's expression that he's just seen something that's freaked him out. “Take a look for yourself,” he says, his voice suddenly devoid of all the cocksure swagger that normally characterizes his attitude to me.
I lean in, part Holly's hair and for a moment I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at. The fact that I can only see by the light of the moon isn't helping much, but gradually I realize that there's a metal triangle, about five inches wide, sticking out from Holly's head. And as I peer closer, I realize with horror that it's embedded deep in her skull, with dried blood around the wound.
“What the fuck is that?” I ask.
“Holly,” says Pierce, “do you know where this piece of metal came from?”
There's no answer for a moment. “There was lots of metal,” she says eventually.
“When?” Pierce asks.
“When the plane crashed,” she says blankly.
Pierce swallows hard. “You were close to where the plane crashed?”
“Yeah,” she says. “There was lots of metal flying everywhere”.
“Did you feel any pain in the back of your head?” he asks.
“I don't know,” she says. “I guess so. Maybe”.
Pierce and I stand there, just staring at the metal. There's no way of knowing how far into her head it goes, but it's hard not to assume that this is the reason why she seems so... blank and placid.
“Want me to try to get it out?” Pierce asks.
“No!” I say, grabbing his arm. “You can't mess around with stuff like this!”
Pierce pulls his arm away from me. “It's not your call. It's hers. If I had a big fucking piece of metal in my head, I'd want it out. How can it make things worse?” He leans closer to Holly. “Holly, do you want me to see if I can get it out for you? It might make you more yourself if I do”.
“Okay,” she says.
“She doesn't know what she's saying,” I tell Pierce, but he's clearly not interested. “Pierce, she can't make her own decisions”.
“Exactly!” he says. “That's exactly why she needs this thing out, so she can stop being such a fucking vegetable!”
I look away for a moment. “You don't know what you're doing,” I say.
“I'm taking a piece of metal out of her head,” he replies. “It's the humane thing to do”.
I take a deep breath, and when I turn back I see that Pierce has positioned himself being Holly and is reaching slowly for the piece of metal.
“This might hurt a bit,” he says, his fingers almost touching the metal. “But I think once it's out, you'll be yourself again and you can get better, okay?”
There's a pause. “Okay,” Holly says.
Pierce takes a deep breath. He glances up at me for a moment, then focuses on the metal. Slowly, his fingers take hold of it.
“You okay, Holly?” he asks.
“I'm okay,” she says.
Pierce nods, and I see him silently mouth a countdown. “There, two, one...” and then he starts to pull on the piece of metal, which slides out just a fraction of an inch before Holly leaps forward, screaming in pain and clutching her head. She falls to the ground, still screaming, and as she rolls over she starts to vomit.
I look at Pierce, who seems frozen in shock, his eyes wide and staring ahead, his hands still in the position they were in when he touched the metal.
“Fuck!” I shout, running over to Holly, who is writhing in agony.
“Get it off! Get it off!” she screams.
“It'll be okay,” I say, trying to soothe her, but she's uncontrollable. As she rolls around, she's jagging the metal on the ground, causing herself even more pain. There's also blood coming from the wound now.
“Do something,” I say to Pierce. I look over at him, but he's still frozen. “Fucking do something!” I shout.
He stumbles over to us, but he doesn't seem to know what to do. “Should I pull it out?” he asks.
“I don't know,” I say as Holly continues to scream.
“Should I push it back in?” he asks, staring at me wide-eyed, hoping I'll give him the right answer.
“I don't fucking know,” I say. “Just do something!”
Holly lets out a louder scream, then she suddenly stops rolling around. She looks up at me, and I realize that the pupil of one of her eyes is massively dilated, while the other is tiny like a pinprick. I look down at her, trying to think of what would be the best thing to do, and then I'm overcome by a growing realization that she isn't moving.
“Holly?” I ask softly.
Her mouth moves a little, as if she's trying to say something.
“What is it?” I ask, glancing up at Pierce, who seems completely shocked and unable to do a damn thing.
“I...” she stammers, “I... I...” Her voice is so quiet, I can hardly hear her, so I lean in closer and she whispers again. “I... I think I pissed myself,” she says.
I take her hand. “It's okay,” I say, but even as I say the words, I see her expression change and moments later I realize that was the moment she died. Slowly, like they do in films, I reach down and close her eyes, then I let go of her hand and sit back.
“I killed her,” Pierce says, staring at her body.
“No you didn't,” I say. “You were just trying to help”.
“If I hadn't tried to help,” he says slowly, “she'd still be aliv
e”.
“You didn't kill her,” I say. “The plane killed her, when it crashed and exploded. She was hit in the head by a bit of metal, that's what killed her. You just tried to save her, and...” My voice tails off. I'm not even sure what I think. The truth is, Pierce kind of did kill her. He assumed he could help, and he didn't think about the possible consequences.
Pierce nods slowly. “We need to sleep,” he says. “We need rest for tomorrow”.
“We should bury her first,” I say.
“What's the point,” he replies. “It's just a body”.
“We should show some respect,” I say.
“There's no point,” he says.
“We're doing it!” I fix him with a harsh stare, and I try to stop myself from crying, even though my voice is definitely trembling. “This time you're going to listen to me and we're going to bury her”.
We dig a shallow grave, just enough to roll Holly's body in and cover her with dirt. When I say 'we', I mainly mean 'I', because Pierce barely helps. He just seems totally stunned that he was the one who caused her death, even if his intentions were wholly good. All the cockiness and arrogance that I disliked about him has gone, replaced by... I'm not sure yet, but he's a lot quieter.
“Should we say something?” he asks when we've finished covering her up.
“Like what?” I ask. I turn to him. “You Christian?”
He snorts. “Fuck no. You?”
I stare at Holly's grave. “I don't know,” I say.
“That's a fucking stupid answer,” Pierce says. “If there's a God, why did all this happen?”
I shrug, then I look around at the darkness that surrounds us. In the moonlight, I can barely see Pierce properly. It feels like we're so alone out here. And finally I realize that no-one's coming to rescue us. We have to rescue ourselves. That's what I'm thinking about as I finally manage to fall asleep after Pierce and I move on a few hundred meters away from Holly's body.