by J. D. Laird
Over this makeshift grave, Madison whispers a quiet prayer to herself. In it she mentions disbelief, anger and forgiveness. Madison’s body is weak from emotion, hunger and thirst. She lays one final trembling hand on the rough surface of the misshapen tomb and pats it softly. In this gesture she says her final goodbye.
Flicking on her flashlight, Madison crawls with what remains of her strength back to the stairwell. The upper levels are obscured and densely buried with rock. Madison squeezes herself under the stairs to where the ventilation shaft cover is. Between the slants in the grating a gentle breeze still wafts. Madison presses her face against the slants of metal.
The ventilation hatch is screwed in place at each of its four corners. Madison searches herself for something to pry the screws loose with. Her hands find the stripes on her chest. Madison plucks one off, not caring which, and wedges the military stripe into one of the screw heads and twists.
Madison has made the decision that she can’t allow herself to waste away. There will be no one to bury her the way she buried Dale. There will be no one to cry as she withers away into oblivion. She has learned so much in these last few hours buried in the earth. Madison is determined to not let those lessons go to waste in the rotting skull of her corpse under the mountain.
Madison breaks several of her rank stripes as she works them into the screw heads and twists. One of the strips even cuts open her hand when it snaps loose. Madison wraps the injury with a torn piece of her undershirt. The final screw falls to the floor and the light sound of the pang of the metal against the cement echoes in the enclosed chamber. Madison kicks aside her broken striped bars. Part of her wonders if this hadn’t been the secret purpose behind collecting them all those years. There certainly didn’t seem to be any other purpose in the moment. Madison wraps her fingertips around the grating of the vent and pulls. It releases from the wall with a snap. Both the vent and Madison let out a sigh of relief.
Throwing the ventilation plate off the side, Madison doesn’t care how much noise it makes. The metallic clang of the grating hitting rock fills the space, echoing with a nearly deafening sound. Aiming her flashlight down the ventilation shaft, Madison examines the inside walls of the ventilation shaft for any collapsed portions. To her surprise everything appears intact. The shaft is deep in the wall. It was apparently both deep and solid enough not to have been affected by the cave-in like the rest of structure. Like Madison, it has survived.
Placing herself on her belly, Madison measures her shoulder width against the opening of the vent. It is a narrow fit, which she finds even more true as her shoulders rub up against the edges of the metallic walls. Madison can only manage to squeeze into the shaft by turning her body sideways. Her one arm is out in front of her with the other pinned underneath. Madison’s legs dangle behind. She holds the flashlight in the hand underneath her, angling it past her chest so the light shows from under her, lighting her way.
The first moments are the most uncomfortable. It isn’t until her body is fully inside the shaft that Madison truly feels herself start to be able to breathe again. There is no going back, Madison tells herself. Which is true. Even if she wanted to, her body is too far wedged into the shaft. There is no way to turn around.
Using the arm out in front of her to pull herself and her legs to push, Madison crawls through the ventilation tunnel on her hip. Her shoulder’s grind against the metal sides with every movement forward.
It doesn’t take long for the thoughts of claustrophobia to creep in. Thoughts of being stuck forever. Madison’s brain fights her. Her own fears are her biggest obstacle. Madison ponders the possibility that the shaft narrows. Perhaps she would get to the end and have no way out? Or there would be a sudden turn, too sharp for her to take? Or a drop that would be perilous to make head first? Then she would wait uncomfortably to die. To waste away lost, abandoned and alone.
But Madison is already dead, she consoles herself. She is dead either way. Madison can waste away in the tunnel that is now a rocky grave. She could die with Dale. Or she could die with hope, die knowing that she tried. Something Madison’s grandmother used to say rattles in the back of her mind, “The only way to truly fail is to never try.” Failure in this instance is not an option.
Madison grins despite the circumstances. Her grandmother’s voice echoes in the space between her temples. Madison’s grandmother had always claimed to have come up with the saying herself despite the fact that Madison was sure she had read it somewhere else while in her early teens. Madison never confronted her grandmother on her lie though. The magical part of her thought that the author must have known her grandmother before they had written the phrase.
Madison squeezes herself further down the shaft. There is no visible end in sight. Madison wonders if she isn’t delirious. She wonders if her own thinking now hasn’t been altered by the combined effects of desperation and fatigue. Is it absurd to think that a human being can fit through a space meant for mere air? Madison dreams of hopeful visions of freedom and a sudden burst of sunshine. Madison envisions herself crawling out of the vent, it opening out into some desolate part of the desert. She sees herself crawling out of the shaft and finding herself with more space than she knows what to do with. Were these crazy thoughts? Is delirium truly setting in? Or is it hope? The fantasies of something better giving life its meaning.
In the space at the end of desperation, Madison finds room both reality and fantasy. The ventilation shaft which seems to go on forever suddenly has an opening in the top of its paneling. Madison looks up and finds that the shaft deviates and a vertical portion of the shaft runs up above her.
The climb will be difficult. There are no handholds. Madison will have to wedge herself up against the sides to get to the top. But it is a change, and with change comes a new prospect for hope.
13 Gabriel
The bike ride across the city takes hours. The sun is low in the sky by the time Gabriel makes it to his daughter’s school. Rays of light are threatening to disappear behind skyscrapers as the sun begins its descent. Gabriel curses himself for not making better time. He had needed to stop several times on his trek due to roadblocks. Cars had crashed into one another at several intersections and created walls of twisted steel. Gabriel had seen more dead bodies at these places. Dead bodies were the only types of bodies Gabriel could find.
Gabriel had to make another stop when vibrations filled the scene and shook the ground again. Dropping his bike, Gabriel squeezed himself under an abandoned car to hide. The large triangular shape he had seen earlier passed overhead again. Whether it was the exact same vessel or a different one Gabriel couldn’t tell. The strange object in the sky moved in the same way. It passed over in a steady line, one tip of the triangle always pointing forward as it cut across the sky. Gabriel was grateful when it didn’t stop. He felt even more grateful that it was heading in the opposite direction.
However, the largest obstacle that Gabriel had overcome had been the bridge over the river. Most of it lay in ruin. It looked as though it had been bombed. Though Gabriel only suspected this based on what he had seen in movies. Bits of debris lay strewn across the road on either side of the crossway. Gabriel could see the shadows of drowned vehicles in the waters below. Fortunately he was also able to find one portion of the bridge where the two halves of the bridge on either side were nearly intact. There was only a small gap, maybe five feet, separating the two sides of the bridge from one another.
The ground near the gap was uneven. Gabriel was careful with every step as he neared the edge. He feared that the pavement and cement would give way under his weight and he would collapse into the river below. Gabriel first tossed his backpack over the gap and to the other side. He then hurled the bike. At first Gabriel feared it wouldn’t make it across. The bike soared through the air with its front wheel swinging wildly. A sigh of relief came as it crashed onto the other side. No doubt the bike was now more scratched up then it had been before.
When it was Gabri
el’s turn to cross over the gap he wished that someone had been there to throw him. Five feet of horizontal distance seemed much farther to cross when the threat of a much farther vertical drop loomed should he fail. Gabriel tried not to think of what hitting the water would do to him. He tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong. He wiggled his toes and tested them. He warned them not to trip over one another. Gabriel even checked his shoelaces to see if they had magically been tied together this whole time as this might be his downfall. He tested her legs. Then he even tested the jump. Gabriel leapt between abandoned cars for practice. He tried his best to judge the distance and even overestimated to make sure he could make the leap.
By the time Gabriel was ready to make the perilous jump he had already planned out his trajectory and cleared out all the rocks that might have lay in his path. Gabriel sprinted toward the gap. His thick work boots pattered against the cement. When he was inches from the gap Gabriel’s mind panicked. A series of images of all the things that could go wrong flashed through Gabriel’s head. Fortunately Gabriel’s body was more focused. He soared over the gap and crashed onto the other side. He scraped his knees and palms as he braced himself and fell forward.
Rolling onto his back, Gabriel stared up at the sky and laughed. It was the only laughter heard for hundreds of miles around.
Gabriel now stands before the elementary school that his daughters attend. He is no longer laughing. Laughter had been a sound that once filled the school. It had filled the playground. Gabriel used to be able to hear the echoes of it after he had dropped his daughters off at school and all through the long workday. But now there was no sound. All that remained was a dark building. It had the same holes cut into it as if something had scooped out its insides.
It took all of Gabriel’s courage to force himself into the school. The doors were not locked. They creaked the way they always did when Gabriel pushed them open. The same way they did when he had come to the school for special events, award ceremonies, plays or parent-teacher conferences. Those events had been strange experiences. I was always like stepping into a children’s workplace. To see his daughters as little employees and this was their place of business. It was a creative and safe space where their imaginations were fueled by new facts and activities.
Where once Gabriel knew the hallways as noisy and full, now they are empty. There are divots in the tiled floor, the same ones as he has seen in the sidewalks outside. Something has scooped up what had been laying there. Gabriel tries not to let his own imagination wonder what that might have been. The shadows of some bizarre event paints a picture for him all the same.
There are stray crayons scattered across the floor. Sheets of homework, basic arithmetic and vocabulary, rustle down the hall. The sheets turn over with the slightest breeze. Peering into classrooms, desks are either empty or missing. Little indented circles are in the ground where the desk in a row should have been. A picture book with an image of a colorful caterpillar sits on a leaf lays open. It is one of Gabriel’s youngest daughter’s favorites. It will likely never be read again.
Gabriel nearly collapses when he finds the first body. His heart sinks in his chest as he can’t help but see the face of his own daughters on the tiny corpse’s own distorted features. “Isabel…Mary…” The two names creep from Gabriel’s lips without him knowing it. A prayer of courage in a time of need.
The body lays at the base of the stairs. A library book lays beneath her. The tiny school uniform is smeared in dark blood from a head wound. She would have died instantly, Gabriel thinks. Or maybe he just told himself that to ease the pain. She must have died instantly or else someone would have come to help. Somebody would have attempted to save her otherwise. Gabriel tells himself these things and makes himself believe them. However, in the back of his mind, in the darkness, he knows that there had been no one left to help her.
Gabriel wills himself to search the entire school. He checks his daughters’ classrooms first. The spots where he knew they sat are now empty. The desks are gone, vanished and taken by some unseen force. The sight makes Gabriel unknowingly and silently weep. The pain in Gabriel’s chest overcomes any ability to control his emotions. He is unable to resist the intense feeling of sadness. The holes that dot the city seem to be now growing in his heart. Pieces of him are disappearing with every new grisly discovery in this strange new world.
After searching the classrooms, Gabriel checks the gym. It was the preferred location for fire drills, Gabriel had learned at a parent-teacher conference. There were is no one there. He then checks the cafeteria. He only finds rotting food, a few days old, left uncovered. The only ones enjoying the food are happy flies who hum as they enjoy their newfound meal. In the library, Gabriel finds more dead bodies. A bookcase has fallen and two forms lay underneath. It takes all of Gabriel’s courage to look at them. Both are boys. Gabriel lets out a sigh of relief, which is followed by an immediate pang of remorse in his gut. These boys had a father. Where Gabriel had found empty spots in a classroom, these boys’ fathers would find that their sons had succumbed to an even darker fate.
Gabriel weeps some more. They are his final tears. He curls up amongst a stack of books. The light outside fades and the library grows dark. Gabriel cries until he can hear the sound of his own sobs in his dreams.
14 Madison
By the time Madison makes it to the top of the vertical portion of the ventilation shaft, her whole body feels monstrously broken. Though she had fought off the urge to faint, her whole body drips now with sweat. There is so much perspiration she is sure each bead of sweat is the last ounce of water she has left in her body. The dirt that she had previously been covered in from the cave-in now pours off her like a mudslide. The slick dirt leaves a trail up the side of the metallic ventilation shaft. Once at the top, Madison pushes herself onto her back and lays there. She just feels her lungs fill and empty with each painful breath.
This is to be the end, Madison thinks. She will be found in this airshaft like an idiot, only minutes from rescue likely. She daydreams that her would-be rescuers will call her a fool for even trying. All of her hope is spent.
To make matters worse, Madison had dropped her flashlight during her ascent. The sweat in her palms had served as a well-designed lubricant and the small utility flash had slipped from her grasp. She had debated dropping back down to get it. But Madison had already made it too far and knew there was no way she had the energy to make the climb all over again. Not that any of it mattered now, Madison had failed. She is in darkness, or at least she should be...
There is a faint glow. Madison drops her head back and focuses on it. The glow is coming from the far end of the shaft. She can see the outline of grating against the light. It is a way out!
This final length of shaft is quickly traversed. Madison marvels at her new found strength. The sweat that covers her body seems to ease the stress of the friction as she slides across the metallic surface of the ventilation duct. The soreness of her limbs fades as the light at the end of the tunnel grows brighter. Madison fixates her focus on it. She cares about nothing else in that moment.
When she finally reaches the grating of the ventilation plate, Madison wraps her fingers around it and pulls her lips up against it. She breathes in the pure air from beyond the shaft. She sucks in deep breaths, filling her lungs with salvation. The light coming through the shaft cover is disorienting. Being in darkness for so long, the brightness confuses Madison’s brain and her eyes take time to adjust. When they finally focus, Madison realizes she is overlooking the main entryway to the base. It is a space designed like an airplane hanger, a round steel tunnel where trucks and other vehicles pass through on their way into the base. It is perhaps the sturdiest part of the entire base. Some engineer no doubt had taken into account the importance of a facility’s only entry or exit point. It had to remain intact should those working within ever happen to be trapped inside. Those trapped like Madison. The only thing that separated the tunnel from th
e outside was a heavy steel door that opened wide enough for a large semi-truck. Only that door now separates Madison from freedom.
That and the grating!
The horror of the realizations strikes Madison in an instant and panic fills her chest. She claws at the grating desperately in search of her freedom. Her fingers try to work their way through the openings in the slants. She feels for any screws that she might be able to loosen. But Madison’s fingers are too short, too restricted caught between the grating. She pounds at the metal that holds the grating plates together. She pounds at it with her bare knuckles and the skin on them breaks open. Madison curses herself for not thinking it through. For not thinking of how she was going to get out of the ventilation shaft on the other end. Had she thought about it beforehand, she would have entered the shaft feet first. Maybe then she would have been able to get enough force behind her to kick in the crate. But now she was stuck. Madison was wedged in with no hope of escape. Her skeleton would eternally stare out through the grating. Her empty sockets longing for the prospect of the rescue that lay beyond. Madison screams. She pounds on the grating and she screams some more.
Madison stops when someone screams back.
15 Gabriel
In a restless sleep Gabriel dreams of his daughters. He also dreams of his sisters teasing him, his father holding a familiar revolver and of Talia staring off at a sunset. He races after each of them on his sisters’ bike that he had painted black. He races after them as each one disappears, swallowed by a dark round void. Gabriel tries to enter the void, tries to touch it, but it never comes to him. It is always just out of reach. He wants to be in the void, to be taken by the dark spherical specter. He wants to fall into it and never came out again. He wants the darkness but the darkness didn’t want him.