Flowers in a Dumpster

by Mark Allan Gunnells

  Alec shook his head vigorously, thinking about Lester and Pete and wondering where their bodies were.

  “You say that now,” Melanie said. “You’ll change your tune when the hunger pangs start. I hope there’s some left when the time comes.”

  A black despair settled over Alec. It was like he’d stepped into one of his own horror novels. Maybe that was how he needed to think of this situation; if he thought of this as a plotline, perhaps he could come up with a solution, a way out, a happy ending.

  When Melanie dug into her meal, Alec looked away, wondering if he’d ever get home again.

  ***

  “I wonder if they’ll ever get home again,” Chief Simms said as he snapped the padlock back into place.

  EXPECTANT

  March

  Rhonda Little checked her reflection one final time before answering the door. She hadn’t been on a date since she and Steven broke up last year. She felt horribly out of practice, anxious, too.

  Putting on her most brilliant smile to mask her jitters, she opened the door and said, “Hi there.”

  “Hello,” Darren said, looking exceedingly dapper in his orange turtleneck and dark khaki pants. He was a copy editor at Unrequited Press, the company that published Rhonda’s series of historical romance novels. He’d begun flirting with her three months ago, and while Rhonda had enjoyed the attention, she’d never expected it to go further.

  “Do you want to come in?” Rhonda asked, hoping it wouldn’t be misconstrued as an invitation of a more illicit sort. It had been so long, she wasn’t sure what the rules were for dating these days.

  “Actually I have tickets for the symphony. We should be going if we’re going to get there on time.”

  “The symphony, I’m impressed. Let me grab my wrap.”

  “Oh, and you might want to find a vase.”

  “A vase? For what?”

  “For these,” Darren said, pulling a bouquet of daffodils from behind his back.

  “Darren, they’re lovely.”

  “Just a token.”

  Rhonda took the flowers and held them close to her face, breathing in their sweet perfume. Her nose twitched as she inadvertently inhaled spores or pollen. She sneezed three times in rapid succession, demurely into the palm of her hand.

  Darren frowned. “Dear, I hope that’s not a bad omen.”

  “Not at all,” Rhonda said, smiling. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

  After depositing the daffodils into a crystal vase on the coffee table and grabbing her best black wrap with the pearl clasp, she linked her arm through Darren’s and allowed him to escort her to his car.

  May

  Rhonda sat on the edge of the bed with her best friend, Anna, staring at the plastic stick in her hand.

  “Are we happy or sad?” Anna asked, placing a comforting hand on Rhonda’s shoulder.

  Rhonda smiled weakly and said, “Mostly we’re dazed, but with a side of happy, I guess.”

  “Are you going to try to get in touch with Darren?”

  “He never even bothered to call me after our one date. If he didn’t want anything to do with me, I don’t know why I should think he’d want anything to do with a baby.”

  “Screw him,” Anna said. “You make a good living, and you’ve got Auntie Anna here to help out. This kid’s going to have a great life. She’s damned lucky to have you for a mother.”

  “She?” Rhonda asked with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve already determined the sex, have you?”

  “It’s a feeling. Call it a sixth sense or whatever you want, but I have a hunch you’re going to have a little girl.”

  Rhonda smiled and hugged her friend, though she knew Anna was wrong. She didn’t know how she knew, but she had no doubt that the child she carried was a boy.

  Rhonda didn’t tell Anna this, however. Like she didn’t tell Anna she hadn’t had sex with Darren. Oh, she’d wanted to, she’d made advances on their date, but he had rebuffed all her attempts at seduction.

  Rhonda hadn’t had sex with anyone in the past year and a half.

  September

  “Could I have some more rolls, please?” Rhonda asked the waiter as he passed.

  “Slow down, girl,” Anna said from across the table, nibbling on her Caesar salad. “You’re not going into hibernation, no need to stuff yourself to last all winter.”

  Rhonda blushed. “I am eating for two, you know.”

  “Not that anyone could tell. You’re still as thin as ever. No one would guess that you were six months pregnant.”

  “Some girls are lucky that way.”

  Anna’s lips tightened and she squinted, a look that Rhonda knew meant her friend was about to get serious. “Rhonda, are you sure everything’s okay? What does your doctor say?”

  Rhonda put her fork down and favored her friend with a harried smile. “I’m fine, I promise you. We’ve been over this a hundred times already. Dr. Matthews says the baby is perfectly healthy. He says not every woman gains a ton of weight, and as long as I’m eating right and taking care of myself, the baby will be perfectly fine.”

  Rhonda hated lying to her best friend, but she didn’t know how to explain to Anna that she hadn’t been to see a doctor since finding out she was pregnant. Dr. Matthews was an invention of her imagination. Anna would worry and insist Rhonda see a doctor right away, but Rhonda’s baby had advised her against it.

  Rhonda knew it would sound crazy if she told anyone, but her unborn son talked to her. Not out loud, not with words, but on the inside. His thoughts surfaced in her own. He told her that he was a special child and that she had been chosen to be the vessel through which he would enter this world.

  “What is that perfume you’re wearing?” Anna asked. “It smells heavenly.”

  “What? Perfume? I’m not wearing perfume today.”

  “Oh, well, someone must have put out some fresh flowers,” Anna said, looking around the restaurant. “I could swear I smell daffodils.”

  May

  “Rhonda, are you sure you don’t want me to come up there?”

  Rhonda closed her eyes and sighed into the phone. “Anna, really, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m enjoying the peace and quiet, and I’m working on a new novel.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you being all alone. What if something happened?”

  “It’s not like I’m in the middle of the desert.” Rhonda laughed. “I’m at my lake house in Maine.”

  “When are you coming back home?”

  “I don’t know. I need some more time on my own, away from my life there in New York, away from all the memories.”

  “Rhonda, honey, I love you, but you need to get on with your life. It has been six months since the miscarriage. You need to come back and face things, dismantle the nursery, reclaim your life.”

  “In time. I’ll call you before the weekend, I promise.”

  “You better.”

  Rhonda hung up the phone and placed a hand over her extended stomach, feeling the movements of the child inside her. It had been the baby’s idea to tell everyone she’d had a miscarriage then seclude herself away at the lake house. No one would understand the protracted gestation period. She’d been pregnant for fourteen months now and she still hadn’t come to term.

  “I can be patient,” she whispered to her son. “I know you’ll come when you are ready. I look forward to meeting you.”

  October

  Rhonda lay back on the bed, sweat glistening on her forehead. She knew she was in labor, but she felt no pain. She looked down at her body and knew she should’ve been repulsed by what she saw, but she wasn’t.

  From her waist down, Rhonda’s body was covered by a hard, yellow shell—a cocoon of some sort. Large veins ran below the surface. A thick layer of mucus covered the entire thing. The cocoon pulsed, inflating and deflating with contractions that would soon bring her son into the world.

  Rhonda bit her lip and breathed deeply, listening to her child whisper assurances i
nside her head. A sharp pain, almost orgasmic in its intensity, ripped through her as she felt the cocoon split open. She arched her back and moaned softly as a pungent white liquid poured from a rift in the cocoon, soaking the sheets and carpet. Her son crawled out into the world, unfolding himself and standing on slightly shaky legs.

  He was full grown, at least six feet, with a thick head of dark hair and piercing gray eyes. Rhonda realized he looked exactly like Darren. He glanced down at her and smiled, mouthing the words, “Thank you, Mother,” though Rhonda could hear no sound.

  The world blurred around the edges, growing gray, and Rhonda knew she was leaving this life as her son entered it. She could not survive now that he was no longer a part of her; she felt too hollow inside.

  As Rhonda slipped away, her son leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.

  He smelled like daffodils.

  THE LAST MEN ON EARTH

  Bobby and I have been together for a year now. Not ‘together’ as in a couple, although if you ask me that’s what we are. I mean, we spend almost all our time together, we sleep together. Hell, we’re practically married. Still, Bobby balks at the use of the word ‘couple’. He claims to be straight, after all, and said until he met me he’d never ‘messed around with’—his words, not mine—another guy before. He says what we have is not romance, merely desperation and convenience.

  You see, Bobby and I are the last two people on Earth. Or at least, as far as we know. It’s been a year. We’ve been traveling all across the U.S. on motorcycles and we haven’t seen another living soul. According to Bobby, what we have is what happens in prisons, necessity.

  Six months after we started traveling together he let me go down on him for the first time. He never returns the favor or kisses me or holds me afterward. He does make love to me—though he’d cringe if he heard me call it that—but always from behind so he doesn’t have to see my face. Still, I hold out hope that eventually he will grow to see me as more than the scratching of an itch; I hope that one day he will love me.

  The way that I love him.

  ***

  The world ended by some kind of plague—a sickness, sort of like in that Stephen King book. Only faster. People got sick and were dead within hours. It was no more than a week before the entire planet was wiped out.

  Except for me and Bobby.

  For some unknown reason we are immune.

  I met Bobby about two weeks after everyone in my hometown died. I was wandering around in some kind of numbed dazed; I actually think I was on the edge of losing my mind. Then Bobby drove into town on a Harley. He came from the next state over. Bobby said I was the first living person he’d seen. I was instantly taken with him, and I readily accepted the offer to join him.

  We’ve been traveling ever since, scavenging grocery stores for nonperishable foods and water. There are bodies everywhere, and the smell has become quite rancid. We’ve taken to staying away from places that were heavily populated. Recently I’ve been lobbying for us to settle down, somewhere away from the remains of civilization and the stench of decay. Bobby wants to keep going, keep searching for other survivors. Although after a year of looking, I think he is giving up hope, accepting that it’s just him and me. That’s one step closer to us becoming a real couple. An Adam and Eve of the new world, only minus one Eve and plus a second Adam.

  ***

  I met Andrea on a Tuesday. I think.

  At first I made a point of keeping track of the days, marking them off on a calendar I carried with me, but I had grown lax, letting several days pass before going back to X them out. The day of the week is unimportant. What’s important is that I was alone.

  We were in the North Carolina Mountains, and we’d spent the last couple of days at a cabin in a wooded area, miles from the nearest town. Whoever once lived here had apparently not been home when the plague hit. I actually thought I was getting close to convincing Bobby to make this place our home, to stop our fruitless search of a dead world.

  As midday approached on our second day at the cabin, Bobby told me he was going to hike to the nearest town and see what there was to salvage. I offered to go with him, but he said no, he needed to be alone. Hurt, I did not press the matter. I suspected he wanted some time to consider the issue of settling down or moving on. If I gave him his space, I knew there was a chance I might get what I wanted. As if in confirmation, before he left, he gave me a quick, tentative kiss. Our first.

  After he was gone, I began gathering up firewood. It was early September, not yet cold, but it was beginning to get chilly at night. I figured I’d get a fire roaring, making the cabin as cozy and homey as possible for when Bobby returned. He’d been gone two hours and I was deep in the woods gathering branches and sticks when I heard movement in the brush behind me. I turned with a smile, expecting to see Bobby. Instead, I was shocked to find a young woman standing there.

  She looked to be in her early twenties, thin with pale skin, red hair that fell about her shoulders in tangled curls. She wore jeans and a stained T-shirt. She stood completely still, staring at me with wide eyes and an expressionless face. She seemed almost afraid of me.

  “Are you real?” she asked after several moments of silence. “Or are you only in my mind?”

  I tried to speak but at first couldn’t seem to make a sound. I took a few deep breaths, tried to calm myself, and then said, “Where did you come from?”

  “I’ve been staying at a place a half a mile down the mountain, but I ran out of food so I came looking for other cabins. And I found you. God, I’m scared to believe you’re real.”

  “I’m as real as you. What’s your name?”

  “Andrea,” she said and started to cry. Huge, racking sobs shook through her body. “I thought I was the last one, all alone on this planet. I never thought I’d see another living person. I’m so glad you’re here.”

  With arms full of firewood, I stared at this intruder, this interloper into my future bliss with Bobby. Even though she looked slightly malnourished and was covered in filth, it was clear that Andrea was beautiful, and hungry for human contact. I could imagine how quickly she and Bobby would hit it off. The many dreams I had for my life with Bobby began to crumble, and it was all Andrea’s fault.

  “Are you alone?” she asked, taking a step closer. “Is it only you?”

  “No, there are many of us,” I said without thinking, acting on instinct. “Two dozen, we’re living in a sort of commune here.”

  This reeled Andrea in like a trout on the line. “Really? Two dozen people. I want to meet them all. I’ve been so horribly lonely.”

  “You’re welcome to join us,” I said. “There’s plenty of room. It’s up this path.”

  Andrea didn’t hesitate. She rushed past me, heading up the path toward the cabin, babbling the whole time. Obviously it had been a long time since she’d had anyone with which to converse. I waited until she passed me, then dropped all but the largest branch and swung it with every ounce of strength. When I connected with the back of Andrea’s head, I heard a crack and the limb broke in two. Andrea went down hard, crumpling to the ground. I continued to bash her head until it was nothing but mush and bits of shattered skull. Just to be sure.

  I felt nothing. Not guilt, not horror at my actions, but no particular pleasure either. Moving in this emotionally numbed state, I hurried back to the cabin and found a shovel in a storage shed around back. I returned, dug a shallow grave, and buried Andrea deep in the woods where I hoped Bobby would never find her.

  When he finally returned from his trip into town, darkness had already settled outside. I’d started a fire and prepared a meal of potted meat, crackers, and bottled water. Bobby had brought back boxes of food and water, as well as candles and matches. We sat in front of the fire and ate in silence. Only after we had finished the meal did Bobby speak.

  “It’s a nightmare down there. Bodies everywhere and the smells are overpowering. I had to tie a bandanna around my mouth and nose. The world is dead
, I really am starting to think there’s no one left but us.”

  I said nothing.

  “I know you want to stay here,” he said, looking at me with an intensity that both scared and thrilled me. The fire cast dancing light on his face, licking his features. “I think you’re right, I think it’s time to stop traveling and make a home for ourselves here.”

  I felt ready to burst with joy. Tears sprang to my eyes, caused by the happiness bubbling within.

  That night, we made love by the fire, and Bobby finally looked me in the face while we did it.

  SIMILAR INTERESTS

  It was indeed a dark and stormy night.

  Starting like every round-the-campfire horror story that ever terrified Neil Ferwin as a child. Not that the weather was a crucial factor in Ferwin’s plans. Although Ferwin had to admit the rain falling in sheets, hitting the pavement with a deafening roar, and the intermittent strobe-flash of lightning, created a suitably ominous atmosphere. Ferwin smiled as he drove his Cadillac down the highway, pleased with this ambiance. He felt as if he was playing the role of the villain in one of those horror tales from his childhood.

  Ferwin had no illusions about himself. He didn’t try to rationalize his actions or sugarcoat them with lofty motives. He was a killer, plain and simple. He liked to pick up hitchhikers, take them off to a secluded area and brutally murder them. It was a hobby. He delighted in finding new and innovative ways of ending another person’s life.

  Earlier in the evening, while watching television at home, that familiar itch revealed itself again. So, despite the bad weather and poor road conditions, Ferwin had grabbed his car keys and headed for the highway. Visibility was minimal. The road, almost completely deserted, belonged to him. He’d driven for an hour and had yet to see a single hitchhiker. Not surprising, really, in this downpour.

  Perhaps it was for the best. Ferwin had indulged his hobby far too often lately.

  He was a tall man, towering over most people he met, his bulky body shaped into hard muscle by a meticulous regimen of exercise. He’d yet to meet the man he couldn’t overpower. Despite his intimidating build, though, he had a friendly face. His slightly chubby cheeks lent him the appearance of everyone’s favorite uncle. His disarming smile never failed to win the trust of others. It was easy for him, but if he didn’t cut back on his late night highway excursions, he was bound to slip up sooner or later.