Rubber City Ruins

by Tara Summerville

  “So, I’ve been meaning to ask…” Clovis said, pushing a mouthful of food over to his cheek, “what do you two plan to do now?” He swallowed and began to talk more clearly. “I mean, you are more than welcome to stay here for as long as you like. Forever, even. I could get used to having someone around who will talk back to me and not just whimper or bark. But I got a feeling that neither one of you are interested in that.”

  “I would love to stay here… but I don’t think I could in good conscience without knowing what happened to me,” Anna replied.

  “Some things just aren’t worth knowing, though,” Clovis said.

  “You’re just saying that because you want me to stay.”

  “Guilty.” Clovis smiled.

  “I want to see what’s in Washington D.C.,” Cole added.

  Clovis raised his eyebrows. “You told him about the roof?”

  Anna nodded. “Yeah, but I probably shouldn’t have. Now he has it in his head that he wants to go there.”

  “And you don’t want to?” Clovis seemed surprised.

  “No, I don’t. I have no intention of taking a bad situation and making it worse.”

  “I think it would make things better, not worse.” Cole put his fork down and leaned back in his seat. “I’m tired of hiding out in one place and being afraid.”

  “You have every reason to be afraid of the world, man. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It makes you smart," Clovis replied.

  “I disagree.” Cole folded his arms across his chest.

  Anna shifted her focus back to Clovis. “I do have to ask, though… is there anywhere else I can go to find out what happened to me? The A-IX facility here was a dead end and we were just going to go back home to see if there was something I had overlooked at my house.”

  “You really have no intention of staying here… and there’s probably nothin’ I can say to get you to change yer mind?”

  She shook her head.

  “There’s one more place that’s left to look. And since you are hellbent on leaving, I guess I better tell ya.” He cleared his throat and finished his story of his escape from A-IX.

  Clovis climbed the stairs out of the laboratory and inhaled deeply as he admired the greenery for the first time in over 10 years. He watched as the group of his fellow inmates walked up the long narrow driveway in a tight group.

  “Clovis," a raspy voice said behind him.

  He turned and saw Eugene gasping for air as he finished climbing the last step out of the laboratory.

  “Before you go, I feel as if I owe you an explanation.” He leaned against the closed door.

  “Ok.” Clovis took a few reluctant steps towards him.

  “That day in the lab…. when you broke my jaw.” He cleared his throat. “I was never able to shake that day. I saw something in your eyes that I had never seen before in man. It was something so alien, yet something very familiar. It shook me to my very core and made me doubt the humanity of my work… my entire life’s work. I wanted to tell someone what I saw. I needed to hear someone affirm that the work that we were doing was good and noble and important. But they wired my jaw shut. They wired my jaw shut for almost a month. All of those thoughts were trapped inside my brain without anyone to talk to. I wrote so many emails trying to explain the things that I was feeling… but I just couldn’t send them. At the time, everyone was worried about me and treated me with kid gloves. I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if I added ‘psychological distress’ on top of everything else that had happened.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I want you to understand why I never came to see you afterwards. I know you felt imprisoned and alienated… and that was never supposed to happen. That was never the plan. Initially, we intended to have patients become full time lab technicians, because you were the ones who understood the complete process. But the behavior of each patient was so erratic from one to the next that we had to keep you in your respective rooms. I think we all started to doubt our work. We were all approaching that proverbial breaking point… there was more whispers and slowly people began to quit. Just as the wind began to change, the virus broke out and people started dying. The government sent out a certified memo claiming that they were seizing all A-IX operations. That’s why I’m here, Clovis. I came to free everyone and destroy all of the paperwork before the feds could get to it.”

  “...ok.” Clovis turned to leave.

  “Wait… there’s one more thing.” Eugene began to cough violently and held up his hand signaling Clovis to wait until he had cleared his throat. “We gathered the remaining funds that we had left before our accounts were frozen and bought enough antidotes for the higher ups and their families within the company. There is a man who I’m quite certain can help you, if you are willing to seek him out.” He handed Clovis a slip of paper.

  Clovis looked at the address written on the small piece of paper. “No---”

  Eugene held up his hand again and coughed. “You are absolutely right in your hesitation to listen to me after everything I put you through. But he will keep you safe. If you go it alone, the feds could find you. I promise you, Clovis, the things that they will do to you will far eclipse the things we have done to you.”

  “You said that there was a virus that killed everyone?” Clovis dropped his defensive posture.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have the virus too?”

  “I do.”

  “But you said that there was an antidote…”

  Eugene shook his head slowly. “I didn’t want it. Headquarters offered it to me, but my wife and daughter were already dead by that time. Besides… I feel like this is my just punishment for the things I have done.” A bloody tear rolled down his cheek and smeared across his face as he wiped it away with his sleeve.

  “I should try to catch up with them…” Clovis looked behind him at the group that had disappeared at the end of the driveway.

  “I understand.” Eugene slid down the back of the door and buried his face in his hands. “I have just one more request of you, Clovis.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Could you forgive me?”

  Clovis clenched his teeth as he looked down at the pitiful man who was once light on his feet and sharp witted. He remembered how he used to dart around the room like a newspaper caught in the wind, and smiled even when there was nothing to smile about. Faint whimpers now escaped from his hands that covered his face. Clovis walked over to Eugene and placed his outstretched hand on the top of his head. “I forgive you.”

  Clovis reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and laid it on the table in front of Anna. “It’s the address that Eugene gave me that day. It’s been over 30 years, so I couldn’t tell you if he’s even still there.”

  “You never went?” Cole asked.

  “Hell no.”

  “But Eugene said that you would be safe.”

  “Eugene was a weak man who depended on the strength of others to keep himself propped up. It may have been in Eugene’s best interest to seek out a community to keep him alive… but not me. I manage quite well on my own. Better, in fact.”

  “I understand why you didn’t go," Anna said picking up the piece of paper off of the table and examining the address. “But I have to figure things out, and this place might be my last hope.”

  They finished eating dinner and Anna helped Clovis wash the dishes with a bucket of pond water he had boiled over the fire. After they finished cleaning and drying the dishes, they joined Cole on the sofa with the bowl of berries that Anna had picked earlier that day. Cole had pulled out a board game from under the sofa and set in on top of the coffee table and asked if the others would play with him.

  “Monopoly, really?” Anna scoffed.

  “It looks like it might be fun.”

  Clovis laughed as he slid the lid off and set it to the side. “I think someone is going to be going to bed angry tonight," he said as he began to set up the board.


  And, as promised, Anna and Cole both stomped up the stairs late into the evening as Clovis picked up the pieces of the knocked over gameboard.

  Chapter 14

  The following morning, the two wished Clovis and Oz a reluctant goodbye and promised they would see each other again for no other reason than to hold back tears. Anna watched in her rearview mirror as Clovis leaned down to pet Oz as they drove away.

  The car ride was mostly silent as Anna paid strong attention to the road ahead and Cole gazed wistfully out the window onto the broken countryside.

  “Can I ask you a question that I don’t think you’re going to like?” Cole asked as he picked his head up off of the window.

  “My gut is telling me no…” Anna smiled over at him, “But go ahead.”

  “Why do you still feel the need to do this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After all that we’ve seen… it’s nothing short of a miracle that we actually survived.” Cole leaned forward in his seat and cleared his throat. “The way I see it… the Earth decided to evict humans off the planet by concocting a horrible disease. But not us. Mother Earth decided to spare us. We should be enjoying it. We should go climb a tree and swim in a river and sit by the ocean and read a bunch of books by a bunch of dead authors--”

  “About a world that doesn’t exist anymore," Anna interrupted.

  Cole paused and thought for a moment. “Maybe we can write the stories of the new world. We’re kind of like the bridge that will link the old world and the new world… we will be one of the few that will have seen both. We could just drive to the beach and---”

  “Write books that no one else will ever read,” Anna interrupted him again.

  “What do you mean? Do you not believe that civilization will start over?”

  “I think that it could if there would be anyone left… but there isn’t. Not enough, anyway.”

  “There are people still out there. What about the Troopers?”

  “I doubt they’ll live long enough to see the end of the year, let alone the dawning of a new civilization.”

  “Do you think I’ll live long enough to see it?”

  Anna briefly took her eyes off of the road and peered over at him before turning to look back at the road. His eyes were red and a bit sunken, and his skin clung tightly to his bones. She knew he, too, probably wouldn’t make it to the end of the year. “Of course you will.” She shook her head as if answering an idiotic question.

  “You really think so?” he asked in a small voice.

  “I do. You have me now, and I won’t allow anything bad to happen to any of my friends.” The image of Jackie in the basement of the school flashed across her mind and she shook it away.

  Cole laughed softly to himself. “Heh. You know… I think this is the first time anyone has ever referred to me as their friend.”

  “I think that’s the house back there.” Anna slowed to a stop in front of a long gravel driveway. There was a sign swinging to the side that read 266 Graham, the Millers. “It looks friendly enough.”

  “Do you really think that it’s worth it?” Cole asked again. “We’ve been pretty lucky so far… do you really want to push it?”

  “I do.” Anna nodded sternly.

  “But why?”

  “Why? Because I need to know what happened to me. There’s this unfamiliar sinking feeling in my stomach that just won’t go away, and I feel like if I figure out what happened to me- I can get rid of that feeling.”

  “Couldn’t you just---”

  “My husband is dead, Cole.” Anna’s voice quivered slightly as she stared intensely into the steering wheel. “I know that you never knew me when my husband was alive. You only know of singular Anna. But I used to be more commonly referred to as ‘Anna and Rick’... because we were a team. He was my everything. He helped me through the day my sister died. I had gotten the call from my brother that my sister had died in a car crash on the highway coming back from dinner. As soon as I hung up the phone… Rick was right there. And he stayed there through it all… even the numb parts after the funeral. He was there for me after we found out we couldn’t have kids. He could have left me for a woman who could give him children- something he wanted so very, very badly… but he didn’t. He called it a blessing in disguise. He told me that we could travel through our thirties and see the world and then adopt a lonely 10-year-old and it would be like we had started our family at 30. And when I thought I had a brain tumor… he was there for me. I was this broken and busted person. I complained about work, I complained about headaches. I was afraid that every little symptom was the foundation for a cancer diagnosis. I was neurotic and nervous and sad. I was sad all of the time. I was sad that we couldn’t have kids, I was sad that my parents and sister were dead… and I would sometimes just get sad because we were out of fucking cereal.”

  “I’m sorry---”

  “So, to answer your question- I have to know. I have to know the reason why my husband is dead and why I wasn’t there for him after everything he did for me. Every time he helped me through another crisis I told myself that one day he would be wrinkly and old and need me to help him to the bathroom and I would help him with gusto!” She laughed to herself. “But he was sick… He was sick, Cole… and possibly alone. He was sick and dying and possibly alone and I didn’t get to be there for him---”

  Cole put his cold hand on Anna’s knee. “I understand. Let’s figure this out. If we don’t get the answers that we need here… we’ll just keep looking. Ok?”

  Anna looked down the long driveway and nodded. “Ok.”

  The gravel crunched under their sneakers as they made their way down the long, wooded driveway to the painted yellow cottage with powder blue trim. There were terra cotta pots filled with purple flowers evenly spaced under the front windows, and multiple bird feeders hanging from low branches. As Anna and Cole approached the front door, the birds all scattered to higher branches.

  “If something happens in here, and one of us is able to escape… run back and get Clovis,” Cole said.

  “Are you serious?” Anna laughed. “Whoever lives here has gone to the trouble of filling the bird feeders and planting flowers in pots that no one will ever see. I’m pretty sure we won't be needing backup.”

  “It just seems a little too good to be true. Like a mirage in the desert or something”

  Before Anna and Cole were able to get close enough to the front door to knock, it swung open and a strange looking woman greeted them with a smile. “Aloha and welcome!” The loose skin hanging down past her jawline shook. “Daddy, we have visitors!” She yelled behind her. “You are here to see us, yes?” Her eyes burned brightly.

  “Y-y-yes… I think," Anna stammered. “Is this 266 Graham- the home of Henry Miller?”

  “Yes indeedy-o, I painted that sign out at the end of the driveway myself. And Henry is my daddy.” She smoothed down her white and red polka dotted dress over milky white legs draped in sagging skin. “Would you like to come in? I’m brewing some sun tea in the back yard that should be just about perfect.”

  “That would be nice," Anna said.

  The woman turned around and walked back inside.

  “What’s wrong with her skin?” Cole whispered.

  “I don’t know, but don’t say anything!” Anna snapped back as they followed her inside.

  The inside was brightly decorated with shelves of knickknacks lining the walls and paintings of children and angels and wildlife. The house felt warm and lived-in, something that Anna didn’t think she would ever see again.