Rubber City Ruins

by Tara Summerville

  A few books rustled.

  “Are you ok?” Was the only thing Cole could think to say.

  A few more books rustled. “Help me…”

  “I’m… I’m not going to help you.”

  Jackson moaned.

  “You’re just going to try and kill me if I do.” Cole paced back and forth, wringing his hands.

  “Idiot, I can’t feel my legs. There’s blood in my eyes.”

  “You could be lying.”

  “I can feel a warm puddle forming where there is a shard of broken wood piercing my chest.” He started to cough.

  “I… I can’t.”

  “The axe is down by my feet. Just use it to kill me.”

  “What?”

  “I’m dying, idiot. I just want you to get it over with.”

  “I don’t want your death on my conscience. I… I… I never wanted to kill anyone.”

  “It’s going to happen unless you can get me to a hospital. Can you?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’ve already killed me.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “No, you have.” He coughed again. “Will you just get the axe and get it over with before the adrenaline wears off and I begin to feel all of these injuries?”

  “I… I can’t… I… gotta go…”

  “Go?!” Jackson’s voice was suddenly panicked. “You’re just going to leave me here?”

  “I’m sorry…” Cole responded as he ran out onto the street.

  He spent three days sleeping at the art museum before going back to the library. By day three Jackson was still alive, but by day four he had finally died and Cole could move back in.

  Cole clutched Anna’s steering wheel with both hands and peered at the small cottage at the end of the driveway. Taking one last look, he shifted the car into drive and began to navigate his way down the forgotten and neglected road.

  Chapter 16

  June propped the shotgun against the entryway into the kitchen and sat back down on the sofa across from Anna.

  “Should I break the silence, or should you?” June leaned forward and propped her head on her hands and smiled.

  “I think you just did,” Anna said to the floor.

  “I’m surprised you don’t have anything to say to me. Like, ‘why did you let me stay and my friend go?’ or ‘what do you want with me?’”

  “Why did you let Cole leave?” Anna asked, looking up at June.

  “To answer that question would also answer the question of what I plan on doing with you. And that answer isn’t so simple.”

  “Is it because I know about A-IX and all the terrible things they were doing?”

  June scoffed. “A-I-What? No, heavens no. I don’t care about that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I suppose I should start at the beginning.” June shifted back in her seat, crossed her legs, and smoothed out her dress. “There was a time when daddy, mother, and I would spend wonderful summers in this very house. You see, this wasn’t our main residence. We used to live in a big mansion on a hill with a gate and a swimming pool and everything. But some angry people burned that house down because- as daddy explained- people were jealous of what we had. We had the most marvelous life- oh, the dinners we would have and the snacks and the pizza and soda and hot dogs… we would go out to dinner and order big juicy steaks and mashed potatoes and bacon wrapped everything! And then, the virus broke out. One day, daddy pulled me into his office and told me that he could only get his hands on two antidotes: one for me and one for him.”

  “He couldn’t get one for your mom?”

  “He said that he couldn’t. I don’t know if I believe him or not… but that isn’t the point. The point is that after our house burned down we moved out here to our summer cottage. As people began to die, they cut off the television, and then the telephones, and the worst of all: they closed down all the restaurants and supermarkets. I mean, I would break in and steal packages of hot dogs or ground hamburger at first… but without any power to keep the coolers going… eventually all of the meat went bad. We were forced to eat canned meat like tuna fish and sardines. I managed to make fairly decent and satisfying meals with what I had to work with. But then even the canned food began to spoil. Who knew, right? Canned tuna could actually go bad. There wasn’t really anything left to eat. The bright side was that I lost enough weight to fit into mother’s dresses… but I’m just so hungry all the time. We were left with those packaged sugary coffee cakes and donuts- those surprisingly haven’t spoiled yet. Don’t get me wrong… I love those things. But nothing compares to a warm, beefy meal.” June folded her hands on her knees and smiled at Anna.

  After a brief silence, Anna said “Is that it? That doesn’t explain why you let Cole go.”

  June’s smile grew wider as she seemed to scan the room for the appropriate words. “Cole’s obviously sick… I mean, he was yellow and skin and bones. He’d be too… I don’t know… sinewy.”

  Anna inhaled sharply as she realized the answer that June was gleefully dancing around. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I was such a fat and happy little brat. I could barely travel from room to room but I was the happiest I had ever been. Do you have any idea what it feels like to lose that much weight against your will? I wasn’t looking to reduce to fit into my wedding dress or anything stupid like that… I was starved. And there’s this feeling of helplessness… of hopelessness… that I will never get to sit down at a steakhouse and have a friendly waitress bring me a hot meal.” June looked down into her lap for a moment, and then back up to Anna. “I know what I’m doing is wrong, I know it. But I also don’t care.” Her eyes were cold.

  “How… you’re a sweet and kind woman. How could you possibly kill someone?”

  “I don’t plan on killing you. If I killed you right now, you would spoil… just like all of that supermarket meat.” June shook her head as she stood up and pressed down her dress. “For right now we’re going to talk, and we’re going to eat coffee cakes and drink plenty of water because I’m sure you are quite dehydrated.”

  For the remainder of the afternoon June fed Anna stale coffee cakes and forced her to drink an old soda 2-liter bottle full of water. June would disappear into the kitchen and reappear with two trays of food- one of which she carried down into a bedroom at the end of a long hallway. June joined Anna in the living room while they ate and tried to engage in small talk, but Anna remained silent. Her mind raced with thoughts of Cole- was he reliable? He once abandoned his friends and family, what made her think that she wouldn’t do it again to her? She tried to mentally track where he would be given the length of time that it took them to drive to the cottage earlier in the morning. Was he paying attention to the road as she drove? He was staring out the window at the landscape, but was he really watching it or was he lost in thought? She knew she couldn’t completely depend on him. She had to form an alternative plan to escape, but her hand was firmly cuffed to the radiator. And the radiator wasn’t going anywhere.

  Before going to bed that night, June came and handcuffed Anna’s other arm behind her and patted her on the head like she was a Christmas present that was about to be unwrapped on Christmas morning. It made Anna’s stomach sink. She spent most of the night staring out the window, accepting the fact that Cole wasn’t going to come back. Because if he did drive back to Clovis’ house, they all would have been back. Anna watched as raccoons gathered under the bird feeders and next to June’s garden. The wind would pick up slightly as if to threaten a thunderstorm, but then an overwhelming calm would flush over the yard.

  After everything she had seen, and everything that she had lived through, it was hard to accept such a dark fate of being some fat little girl’s dinners. Where she had once had such hope for humanity was replaced with nothing but disgust. She thought back on the tiny 3rd graders that she used to teach. Sure, they drove her crazy most of the time, but sometimes it was as if she could see past all of the childhood ins
ecurity and immaturity and really see the true person that they would become. And it made her hopeful for the future. Looking around, she knew she was wrong in her optimistic assumption on humanity. If humans were really capable of compassion, everyone wouldn’t be dead and she wouldn’t be tied to a chair waiting to be someone’s lunch.

  “You really got yourself into a predicament, didn’t you my dear?”

  Anna shifted her focus away from the window to the source of the familiar voice: Rick sitting on the sofa across from her. He was wearing his classic navy blue and white checkered button down shirt and faded black jeans. He leaned over with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together. She sucked in a breath to say something but nothing came out.

  “Hi.” He smiled.

  “Hi," she said in a small voice. “You’re… not real, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why… are you here?”

  “Because you seem to be in a tight spot.”

  “I’ve wanted to tell you so much. So much has happened….” Tears began to well in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks without a free hand to wipe them away. “We were a team. We went through everything together. I don’t know what to do without you here.”

  “You seem to be doing just fine on your own. I don’t think that you gave yourself enough credit.”

  “I’m tied to a radiator." She blurted out a self-deprecating laugh through glassy eyes.

  Rick smiled. “Yes, that you are.”

  “I just wanted to know what happened to me. You were sick... and you… you died… and I wasn’t there. I just had to know why I wasn’t there when you died. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I know.”

  “You were always the pragmatic one. If you were here… I probably wouldn’t be tied to this radiator right now. I’m such an idiot.”

  “If I were here you would be in this exact same situation, my dear. You seem to have a misconception about our marriage, Anna. You were always the strong one… you were always the one who wanted to do great things… I was just your cheerleader.”

  “You pushed me to get the CAT scan when I didn’t want to.”

  “That was one time I pushed you to do something that you didn’t want to do. I supported every decision you made. And at the end of the day they were all your decisions.”

  “But I cowered when it came to that CAT scan. I was afraid I had cancer and I just wanted to run and hide.”

  “Maybe I was wrong to make you go.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe I was wrong.”

  “Of course you should have made me---“

  “I made you go, and look what happened. Your instinct was to ignore it.”

  “And my instinct also told me to stay here. My instincts are shit.”

  Rick shook his head. “You don’t know how this is going to end.”

  “I know exactly how this is going to end. She told me how this is going to end.”

  “Anna. You don’t know how this is going to end.”

  A bedroom door at the end of the hallway swung open and June marched into the living room with rollers in her hair and a pink and red flowered bathrobe. “Who are you talking to?” she demanded, placing her hands on her hips.

  Anna looked back to where Rick was sitting, but he was gone.

  The following morning June exited her bedroom fully dressed and her thin light brown hair perfectly pinned against her head. Without even looking in Anna’s direction, she fluttered past her and into the kitchen. When she emerged, she was wearing a laced pink and red apron, and carrying a large oak cutting board, and a butcher’s knife.

  “June… I don’t understand why you’re doing this. There’s got to be plenty of cows and pigs and chickens out there somewhere," Anna said as June went into the bathroom and emerged with a first aid kit and a large spool of gauze and bandages.

  She arranged her collection thoughtfully on the coffee table and looked up Anna with her hands on her hips. “What kind of terrible monster do you think that I am? I tried to find actual cows and pigs… but they’re all gone. They’re dead or they’re just… gone.” June scoffed. “What did you think, as soon as the last can of tuna went bad I said welp, guess I have to start eating people now?!”

  “Please don’t do this… Please.” Anna watched helplessly as June wedged the cutting board between Anna’s body and her arm. She proceeded to unwind a roll of duct tape and tore a piece off with her teeth and placed it against Anna’s mouth.

  “I learned this trick a long time ago. People say some pretty messed up things when you’re about to chop off a limb.”

  Anna closed her eyes tightly as June continued to fiddle with the various tools she had placed on the table. She thought back to the day that Rick was driving her to the hospital to have her migraines checked out, and remembered the feeling of being helpless. She had convinced herself that it was cancer, and that there was nothing she could do about it. Her only line of defense was to hide- to avoid doctors and hospitals. She wanted to go home, turn off the lights, and close her eyes until everything just blew over. Sure, Anna had endured pain and suffering in her life, but she never felt she weathered the storm with any real strength.

  June raised the knife confidently as she ran her fingers over the tendons on Anna’s arm. Anna could hear the knife cut the air before it sliced clear through her arm.

  Anna didn’t notice June’s screams of fear until she herself stopped screaming through the duct tape. When she opened her eyes, June had dropped the knife to the floor and looked at Anna with her hands drawn up to her mouth. On the floor lay the bloodless butcher knife and Anna’s arm. She looked at the stump just above her elbow where her arm used to be. A faint hum began to generate in her ears as she observed the entangled and severed cords and wires embedded beneath a thick layer of pink flesh. Anna felt a sharp electric current run through her head that started at the base of her neck- similar to the sensation she felt in the basement of her house- but this time she didn’t collapse onto the floor. She dug her nails into the side of the arm chair while she waited for the pain to subside, and it eventually did.

  It was as if something had shifted inside Anna at that moment. There was a small voice in her head that wanted to run and hide and cry and lament, and that voice was usually the dominant voice. Perhaps it was the realization that she wasn’t actually herself. Maybe it was the fear of death that made Anna paralyzed in fear in the face of even minor adversity. There was a certain comfort that she felt in the absolute realization of her circumstance, and a steady power was building inside her as dormant memories began to light up like a switchboard in her brain, and everything began to make sense.

  It started with that doctor in the emergency room after her car accident. She felt that he was acting a little too interested in her personal life, but she didn’t think much of it at the time. Then there were the news reports in the waiting room of the hospital the day of her CAT scan. Rick was wrong, it wasn’t just another enough hyperbolic scare… Harlow was responsible for the death of entire cities, and it seemed efforts to contain the virus were almost as destructive as the virus itself. And the CAT scan she went in for wasn’t actually a CAT scan.

  She remembered waking up on a cold steel table and being surrounded by six men and women wearing white lab coats with the words A-IX embroidered on the pocket.

  “Where am I? Where’s Rick?” She urged, a subtle panic building in the pit of her stomach.

  “Welcome to the world, Sidney," a woman said in a kind voice.

  “My name isn’t Sidney.”

  The lab coats exchanged bemused expressions, and some even clasped their hands together with excitement.

  “Right. My apologies, Anna.” The woman smiled. “You don’t know it yet, but you are very important.”

  “What?”

  “You are the last- and best- iteration of a long line of beings that have been tasked with perpetuat
ing humanity after extinction.”

  “Extinction? I just… Where’s my husband? I want to go home.”

  “We will talk about that in a moment, but first we need you to answer a few continuity and consistency questions to ensure the transfer did not have any glitches.”

  “Fine, whatever will get me home.”

  “What is your profession?”

  “I’m an elementary school teacher.” Anna replied impatiently, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Do you have any children?”

  “No.”

  “What was the reason for your visit today?”

  “Can’t you just check your clipboard there?”

  The woman looked up from her papers and smiled down at Anna. “I understand this is frustrating, but I just need to check the box.” The woman looked back at her clipboard. “Now, what was the reason for your visit today?”

  “I’ve been having migraines and it was suggested that I get a CAT scan.”

  “Excellent.” The woman checked the last box with a flourish. “I will just need you to have a quick little visit with the boss around here and then we can set you on your merry little way. How does that sound?”

  “I don’t care, whatever gets me out of here.” Anna regretted sounding so harsh, given how sweet the woman with the clipboard had been to her.

  “Well then, follow me. I’ll take you to his office," she said, and led her down a long empty hallway to a closed steel door at the end of it. “I have 5603 here for you.”

  The red light above the door turned from red to green. The woman looked behind her to find Anna chewing on a fingernail. “Don’t worry, he’s actually quite nice.”

  The interior of the office was different from the rest of the rooms she had seen. The entire facility was painted a sterile white with steel accents and the walls were only occupied by emergency procedure charts. The inside of the boss’s office was painted a deep green with rich wood accents and paintings of desert landscapes in ornate frames.