by Godwin, Pam
He lifted me and ducked his head, but not before I glimpsed the wetness in his eyes. My lips gravitated to his neck as he carried me away from the bed, the glass doors, and the lingering handprint.
Over the next two weeks, my insomnia persisted, but I ate everything Joel put in front of me. Day by day, my strength returned. We didn’t have much of a plan, but we agreed on two priorities. Stay alive. Seek truth. Those words became our mantra.
He wouldn’t let me run his day trips with him. Advertising my survival had too many unknown repercussions.
I held him in a hug. Given the scarcity of survivors, he’d have to travel out of state to gather supplies and information. He’d be gone all day.
When he left, my imagination went feral with visualizations of Joel in an ambush. Joel being gang raped. Joel riddled with bullets. Mutated Joel. To curb these thoughts, I cleaned our guns and took inventory of our ammo and food supply. Our produce was bare. He warned me to stay inside, but the spinach needed harvesting in the greenhouse and I needed to stay busy. His thorough patrol of the town had confirmed we were the only humans left for miles. I grabbed my USP .40 handgun on the way out.
The pool sat a few steps off the back porch. Hydrangeas, rhododendrons and peonies bordered the walk around the pool to the greenhouse. Cyprus mulch laded the air with fond memories. Once upon a good life, I had spent hours making over the various plants.
In the greenhouse, I settled the pistol on the lip of the potter filled with Brussels sprouts and tackled the spinach, green onion, basil. The plants weren’t keeping up. Maybe Joel would find more seed.
The hairs rose on the back of my neck. I stilled my movements.
Nothing. No birds. No katydids. No rustling trees.
I stepped out. Two familiar figures stood on the retaining wall on the other side of the pool. Annie wore her sundress with rainbow stitching. Aaron hunched behind her in his Star Wars shirt, an arm wrapped around her leg, the other around a teddy bear named Booey. I took a steeling breath and approached the pool on shaky legs.
Annie’s face lit up. “Look Mama. I found him. See?”
The wind caught her dress and she held it in place. Aaron looked up at his sister and giggled.
She ruffled his hair and pinned me with the golden glow of her eyes. “Mama? The water’s warm now. Can we swim today?”
My heart jumped to my throat. I stopped a few feet before them. “I don’t think so, honey.”
She tilted her head and crossed her arms. “You don’t have time for us anymore, Mama.”
“Course I do, sweetheart.” Sobs cut up my words. I wanted to comfort her, but she was just another hallucination.
Annie extended her arm and pointed a finger in my direction. She tugged Aaron to his feet. Their skin and muscle sizzled. Then it melted from their small skeletal frames.
My muscles locked. I opened my mouth to scream. No sound came out.
Their skeletons flaked into dust and evaporated into a gray mist. The vapor gusted through me as if a vacuum inhaled it from behind.
All the sounds of summer exploded at once. Chills invaded, reached into my bones. I covered my ears and turned my head to follow the mist.
A fully mutated aphid crouched six feet away. Its wide body and enlarged back forced it to hump over. The insect-like mouth wormed out. A stylet protruded from a sheath. The mouth clicked. Black fluid leaked out.
Pinpricked pupils dotted its all white eyes. Eyes that measured me in the same manner I measured it. Muscles and blood rippled under green see-through skin. Scraps of a receding hair line and beard outlined its bulbous head.
No, it couldn’t be. A heart and arrow tattoo seemed to pump over cartilage and veins on its chest. It was Stan. Flirty fucking Stan who lived two houses down.
It shifted on its double-jointed legs and inched forward. Fuck. The fucking pistol was in the greenhouse. The scissors I used to cut spinach weighted my hand.
The pool sat a knife’s throw to my left. Was it a good time to test Joel’s water theory? A pitch fork stuck out of the compost pile on my right.
Stay alive.
I whipped the scissors at the aphid. Leapt for the pitch fork. Pinned the handle between my ribs and upper arm. Then I turned to face it.
It plunged into the fork with mouthparts snapping. Hooks for hands clawed at my face and missed me by millimeters. The thing continued attacking as if it didn’t feel the tongs impaling its chest and the scissors lodged in its neck.
My pulse raced. I held it squirming at a distance as it robbed my courage. It weighed at least a hundred pounds more than me and struck with the speed of a rattler. I needed skill over strength.
Can we swim today?
I aimed the fork at the pool. It shoved back and redirected with a swinish force. We were three feet from the water’s edge. Might as well have been three miles.
A claw flew out. Brushed my hair. Missed my head. I squeezed the fork’s handle. Wrenched it from the aphid’s chest and raised it over my shoulder.
My heart raced. Black innards dripped from the fork’s tongs next to my face. I swung the handle downward, smacking the point that thrust from its gaping maw.
The mouth went limp with a squeal. I hit it again. Exhaustion stole my balance. The aphid hit the ground and so did I. I kicked it in the torso and it rolled over the edge of the pool.
A pincer shot up and closed around my ankle. I scraped my nails along the concrete edge. My fingers lost purchase. A huge breath filled my lungs and I went underwater.
He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Stephen King, It
CHAPTER THREE: THERAPY
The noon sun lit up the water with crystal clarity. The aphid sank and pulled me with it. I bent my waist and pried the claw on my ankle. It clamped harder.
Pressure pounded my chest. The aphid body had zero buoyancy, a fucking anchor attached to my leg. It didn’t struggle. Didn’t pull. Just simply sank.
Panic set in. The need to gasp set my lungs on fire. What was I thinking using the pool as a means to escape that thing?
The aphid’s skin pulsed in a pearlescent glimmer. A kaleidoscope of formations came and went, morphing its body. For a few precious seconds, I was captivated by the transformation. Tumors emerged, fungus-like, bubbling on its back and arms. Beads of air clouded the water and clung to my hair floating around me. It was dissolving.
I kicked with my legs and worked at the claw with my hand. Tiny hairs, like razor-sharp spines, bit my palm.
Then the hook went limp, releasing me. The abomination that was my neighbor drifted away, sinking, eyes open and staring. I swam like hell and didn’t look back until the front door was barricaded behind me with extra boards and more nails than it needed.
Joel found me that night slouched at the kitchen island, still in my clothes, which were dry and stiff. Clunk-clunk-clunk filled the room as his gear hit the floor. I slipped my shredded palm under the counter when he approached.
He glanced at the reinforced front door then turned hawk eyes on me. “Evie?”
I gave him a lazy smile. “Hey.”
“What happened today?” Low and steady, his tone alerted me nothing was getting by him.
“There was a situation.”
He sat down across the island and raked his fingers through his hair. “Tell me.”
The story unraveled. In his dominating way, he stripped every detail from me. Except my A’s. I didn’t discuss my delusions. Never.
His composure disintegrated as my report went on. His face flushed. Trenches rutted his hair from his fingers pushing through it. But he let me unfold the events without interrupting. The greenhouse. The aphid. The pitchfork. When I told him I was pulled into the pool, he gripped the edge of the counter with white knuckles.
Then I recounted the part about the spiny arm shackled to my leg. He sprang from the stool and kicked it across the room. It bounced off the wall.
“What the fuck?” He paced,
keeping his distance from me. Red splotched his face and neck.
He paused before me, his control on a brittle leash. “You went outside. Oh wait…No. Not only did you go outside, you were armed with a pair of scissors? Are you fucking stupid?”
Probably, but I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut while his temper roared.
“Okay. Fine. We’re going to make this real clear.” He pointed a shaky finger at me. “Absolutely no going outside alone.” He dropped his hand to the counter and blinked at me. “Nod your head.”
Feeling like a sixteen year old with a bad report card, I nodded.
“And if…I repeat…if you have to leave this house alone”—he paused—“we’re talking about the house on fire here.” He played with his goatee, probably considering other scenarios. “If you have to egress alone, under no circumstances do you do so without your shotgun, carbine, side arm and vest.”
I nodded again.
He paced a few laps around the island, pausing at the floor-length windows each time to survey the backyard. When it came to me, he was all bark. I wasn’t frightened. Just too exhausted for a boiling confrontation. So, I kept quiet. Watched him pace. Waited for the cool down.
He righted the stool and settled on top of it. “Let me see your hand.”
I put my hand in his, palm up. Crimson gashes tattooed my skin, wrist to fingertips. I watched his eyes, asked the question that had been plaguing me. “Am I infected now?”
His head snapped up, face soft. “No, B-ay. Since you seem to be immune to the airborne virus, we only have to worry about getting bit now. That…mouth thing has to release a compound. That’s how men absorb the infection.” He squeezed my arm. “I may not know a lot about what’s going on, but on this I’m positive.”
“How do you know? I could be carrying it now and not know. What are the symptoms?”
His flinch mirrored my inward cringe. I wanted to withdraw the question. Instead, we sat in silence, reliving our worst memories. The fever. The thinning skin, turning gray then green. Bloody vomit soaking butterfly-printed sheets. Contorted faces. Pupils receding until they weren’t there at all. Tiny hands hardening, elongating. “You’re right. I’m not infected.” I forced my eyes to his. “There’s not much left of the aphid. I checked from the deck a few times before the sun went down.”
He prodded my hand. “Maybe there’s something to that water theory, huh?” He laid my hand on the counter and fetched the medical kit.
“There’s something else,” I said. “This will sound naive, but I wasn’t afraid of it. I tapped into…I don’t know what to call it, instincts maybe, that I didn’t know I had. I mean, I was worried at first. Then I remembered my self-defense training and figured out how to beat it.”
“It’s called adrenaline. Grandmas use that shit to lift cars and save little kids.” He returned with antiseptic and bandages. “Doesn’t matter. Next time, you’ll be armed. No more close encounters.”
“Yeah…okay.” Except that close encounter made me feel alive for the first time in two months.
Although Joel’s uneventful day paled in comparison, his productivity lifted our morale. He collected most of the items on our supply list, acquiring the majority from empty homes. All of the gas stations were dry, but he siphoned more gas than we needed from abandoned cars.
“Most of the neighboring cities dropped off the power grid,” he said. “Grain Valley will follow soon.” Water had shut off two days earlier.
He stood and rummaged through one of the pouches. “I only ran into two men today. And I saw at least half a dozen aphids. I wasn’t able to pry anything substantial from the men. They were pretty skittish. Neither had been out of their homes in a while.”
Two weeks had passed since I crawled out of my depression. The last broadcast television station went off the air a week earlier. We longed for communication, news, any information that could give us hope.
He glanced up at me then went back to his bag. “I don’t think there are many people left. If there are, they’ve moved on.”
Made sense. I remembered a statistic on the problem the Social Security Administration faced concerning the country’s population. A smile crept up. There was a problem solved overnight. “The SSA reported something like sixty percent of the U.S. was between ages eighteen and sixty-four. Would that be comparable to the age group that survived this thing?”
He nodded, interest glinting his eyes. “Cut that in half to eliminate women and we’re down to thirty percent.”
“But a lot of men in that age group died, with all the mutant attacks, crime, accidents, other illnesses. At best, I’d say only fifteen percent of the human race is alive today.” It was probably closer to ten percent. And without the ability to reproduce, that number would dwindle.
He stood, hands behind his back. “You’re such a nerd.”
Well, I was a numbers junkie by profession and currently on disability leave from my big bank job. My employer had called it mental stress. I lost my kids. Mental stress seemed an inaccurate description. Didn’t matter. All world markets crashed a week later.
He curled up the corner of his mouth. “I have a surprise for you.”
My eyebrows rose.
He dangled a clear bag in front of me. It unrolled and three joints settled to the bottom. “Wanna fly Mexican airlines?”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and whispered against his mouth, “Mr. Delina. You shouldn’t have.”
“Mmm…I figured we both could use a little escape.”
He pulled me against him. Kissed along my jaw. Paused at my ear and wet his lips. His voice rumbled from deep within his chest. “Here’s how this is going to go down. We’re going to light up the ganja in the sun room. Then you’re going to ride me before we hit the second spliff. And when we are good and ripped, I’m going to bend you over the side of the bed and take you from behind until you scream for me.”
Just like him to tell me how it was going to be. He knew what that did to me. A forgotten sensation resurrected in my womb. I squeezed my thighs together and grabbed a six pack of beer from the counter. “Why are we still talking?”
In the sun room, we reclined on the couch. He exhaled and passed the bud.
I twisted the joint back and forth between my finger and thumb. “Where’d you get this, anyway?”
“You know that punk kid who always parked his beater on the street at the bottom of the hill?” He tilted his head toward the street. “Beater’s glove box.”
He brushed a stray hair from my face. “It’s a damn fine thing to see some of your vices back.”
I squashed the roach in the ashtray and wrinkled my nose at him. “Are we talking about the nicotine addiction or the sex addiction?”
“You know damn well it was the pack-a-day I didn’t like.”
I straddled his waist and planted my hands on the back of the couch on either side of his head.
His mouth caught mine and his arousal nudged my belly. “I’m sorry I yelled at you today.”
I ran my thumb across his lips. “I know.”
“You used to stand up for yourself when I lost my temper like that.”
I shrugged. “I know.” I didn’t blame him for losing it. He carried enough guilt leaving me alone, each time outlining do’s and don’ts. I disobeyed him and I paid for it.
His fingers pressed into my waist. His hips ground against mine. “I guess I’ll sleep better when all your vices are back. Though, I think I can wait for your temper to return.”
“Then let’s just focus on one nasty habit at a time, shall we?” I twisted his nipples. His back arched.
He ripped off my nightshirt and followed through on his promises. I screamed for him several times and rediscovered the part of me I’d buried. Did it mean I was moving forward? Had I finally conquered myself, my grief? Where were the tears? Maybe they’d never come.
After, we held each other and lapped up the afterglow of sex, smoke and tender memories of the very good life w
e once shared. We kept our conversations light, aware of the pressing decisions we faced and danger that awaited us outside.
And neither of us gave voice to the question that hovered between us, the one that screamed to be answered. Why had I survived?
April is the cruellest month.
T. S. Eliot
CHAPTER FOUR: APRIL FOOL
Scissors in hand, I stared at my reflection over the vanity, at the long hair Joel favored. I sectioned out a chunk and whacked off ten inches. The tresses hit the floor. No retreat. Much like the devastation of humanity.
Looking back, we should’ve seen it coming. Escalating religious unrest. Ethnic conflict. Political struggle. We should’ve known. It was happening globally in every city, every country.
I brushed out the next section. Chopped another ten inches.
A growing bravado from Muslim extremists had intensified the wars with…well, anyone who wasn’t Muslim. The U.S. spent years attacking the source. But when the war arrived on U.S. soil on April first, everything changed. I tried to put up a wall around my remembrance of the day the virus hit. An ugly ball of grief swelled in my throat and my memories pierced through.
I sat in the boardroom at work. Grain Valley Elementary flashed on my cell phone. The school’s nurse. Annie and Aaron had high fevers. I called Joel and left to pick up the kids.
Annie and Aaron died ten hours later.
I yanked the comb through a tangled knot. Gave up. Cut an angle to frame my face. The next section dropped in my eyes.
Those final ten hours replayed in my head every day since. Tucked together in Annie’s bed, my A’s held on to each other through bouts of fevers and chills. Joel and I held on to them. We sang their favorite songs with them. When their voices ebbed, we read to them. They dozed in and out of consciousness and I told them, “When you feel better, we’ll go to the park. We’ll slide down that big slide you love.”
Two little heads bobbed in agreement.