The End in All Beginnings

by John F. D. Taff

  I raised my head, blinked to clear my sight, lowered my right eye to the scope again.

  No more than five blocks away, to the north and east. Shapes moved about on the roof, no doubt on the penthouse of a condo building similar to ours. I could make out quite a few of them, perhaps a dozen, maybe more. From here it was difficult to see with any clarity, but there seemed to be men and woman—and children.

  I stood, brought my hands to my head, ran them back through my hair.

  I realized that I was breathing hard, that my heart was racing.

  “Daddy?”

  I couldn’t let her know that I was worried.

  Taking a deep breath, swallowing something that had risen, bitter and hard, in my throat, I turned to her. “Yeah, kiddo?”

  “People?”

  That single word, that questioning tone in her voice, nearly brought me to my knees. Money, school, television, these things my daughter had no recollection of, no experience with. And I was okay with that, comfortable if she never gained any experience with these things.

  But people?

  She had no experience with anyone other than me. And the querulous tone of her voice, the doubt that it expressed that what she’d seen were people—actual people—gave me a pang in my chest.

  “Yeah, baby. People.”

  “Can they see us, too? Do you think they know we’re here?”

  I considered that, coldly.

  “I don’t know. I doubt it, though. Unless they have a telescope or binoculars.”

  Cassie turned, walked a few feet away.

  I took a step toward her, reached out to offer some comfort. But she spun before my hand could touch her shoulder.

  “Oh my god, Daddy!” she yelled, her face beaming with unexpected joy. “People! Other people!”

  She brushed aside my hands and slipped in to hug me tightly. She was weeping, I realized a second later, weeping with joy?

  My arms fell around her, returned her embrace.

  But the only thing I could think about was how to bar the stairwell.

  How to close up the gap in the building where we docked the boat.

  How was I going to protect her?

  Because it’s the only job I have left.

  Cassie, however, did not agree with how I was reacting to this discovery, did not think about her safety, her protection.

  She could only think that we were finally not alone.

  I disentangled myself from her embrace, left her alone and confused on the patio, went inside and drank one glass after another of tepid water from the tap until my gut felt hard, and vague nausea clutched at me.

  People.

  I heard her footsteps behind me, heard them enter the room, stop.

  She said nothing, waited for me to turn.

  “So?” she said, not bothering to hide or even mask the exasperation in her voice.

  I bristled, but tamped that feeling down.

  “So what?”

  “Those were people…right?”

  “Yeah, people.”

  She let out a rough, annoyed breath. “We find some people just a few blocks away, the first people I can remember seeing since I was, I dunno, five years old, and what? You come in to drink some water? Don’t tell me that’s all we’re going to do!”

  “Well, of course, it’s not all we’re going to do.”

  “Then what, Dad? What? And why are we waiting?”

  I pulled a chair out, sat at the kitchen table. “What do you want to do? Hop in the boat and race over there right now?”

  “Are you kidding me?” she said, rolling her eyes. “Of course I do! And I want to know why we’re in here right now arguing instead of rowing the boat over there!”

  “It’s not that simple, Cassie.”

  “It is that simple, Dad. It’s really simple.”

  “No!” I yelled, slamming my fist onto the table. “No, it’s not. You might think it is, but it’s not. Our lives for the last few years? That’s been simple. This? People? That complicates things…a lot!

  “You have no idea…we have no idea who they are, what they’re doing. We don’t know a damn thing about them, and you want me to put my most valuable possession in a boat and row it over to them? I won’t do it!”

  “Your most valuable possession?” she repeated, her eyes narrowing. “Is that what I am to you? Something to be guarded?”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Yeah, I guess I sorta do.”

  “A possession? No, of course not. But something to be guarded, protected? Damn right, Cassie! Damn right. You’re all I have left. Of your mother, my world. And I’m not risking what little I have left!”

  I could see that Cassie realized she had hit something raw within me, something that she had guessed at previously, but had never actually seen or heard. And now she was nervous, scared of what she might have jarred loose from the depths of my mind.

  “Dad, I just—”

  “No!” I shouted again. “Don’t ‘Dad’ me, Cassie. What if they’re crazies? What if they’re bad people, Cass? What if they’re really bad people? What do we do then? How do I protect you? You want me to take you over there and introduce ourselves? Hell, no! I’m thinking about how we can make sure they don’t know we’re here. How we can secure the boat landing, the stairwell. Wondering if we can protect ourselves.”

  I was standing now, not remembering doing it. And Cassie looked at me with deep concern.

  There was silence for several moments, neither of us knowing exactly what to say.

  “Daddy,” Cassie finally broke the silence. “We can’t be alone forever. We can’t. Why do we have to have this argument all the time? Sooner or later, we’re going to bump into someone or someone is going to find us, either of which is fine with me because I don’t want to be alone forever.

  “I love you, Daddy, but I don’t want to stay here forever. And you know we can’t…we can’t stay here forever.”

  “Cassie, that’s not what I—”

  “That is what you mean, Daddy. You might not think that’s what you mean, but it is. You can’t protect me from everything in the whole world. You just can’t, no matter how much you want to, no matter how much you love me.

  “If there are people out there, and there are, I want to find them, be with them. Figure out a way to live.”

  “Cassie,” I said, but couldn’t find the words to follow.

  “Daddy, I love you. I really do. But I can’t be your whole world. I’m sorry Mom’s not here. I’m sorry that you feel responsible for that, for me. But I can’t be that for you anymore.

  “And, Daddy, you can’t expect me to make my whole world about you. That’s not fair. And I can’t…I won’t live like that.”

  My mouth went dry. “What’s that mean?”

  Cassie was shaking slightly; I saw that, saw emotion pulse from her, as if her body were sending waves of the stuff into the air.

  “I don’t know. I just know that we…I…can’t stay here forever like this.”

  She fixed me with her eyes for a moment, and when I made no response, she turned slowly, went to her room, closed the door softly.

  This time, I distinctly heard the click of the lock being engaged.

  * * *

  The weather stayed warm for the next week, varying from intensely hot to mildly tropical. There was a brisk wind most days, enough to stir the ocean into foamy caps, but no rain.

  For the first three days, Cassie avoided me completely. When I arose, I took breakfast alone. In the afternoons, I sorted books, cleaned objects we’d found, made my daily inspection of the machinery on the roof.

  Cassie spent most of the time in her room, apparently listening to her iPod. She ventured out periodically to eat meals or to wander about on the roof. A few times over those first days, I saw her at the telescope, no longer aiming it here and there, but focusing on the northeast, on the people.

  And when she wasn’t there, I was.

  I monitored them cl
osely, trying to make out just how many of them there were, what they were doing. But after three days of careful observation, I couldn’t tell much. There seemed to be a mix of races, ages, sexes. They seemed to be doing nothing more than living atop the building, just as Cassie and I were doing.

  I couldn’t tell from this distance, but it didn’t look as if that building had any power. I could see no solar array, and whatever other machinery there was atop the building was unidentifiable this far away.

  What I couldn’t see were their intentions.

  And that’s what kept me there, frozen on this rooftop, unwilling to reach out to them, to trust them.

  On the fourth day since spotting them, I found myself in the spare room of the penthouse, the room with the wall safe. The previous owner had left the combination taped to the underside of his desk, and I’d found it years ago. Now, the safe contained the most valuable things that we’d found—a stash of cash, just in case, a bag filled with twenty-three gold coins and four handguns with ammunition.

  I took the nine-millimeter out, unwrapped its cloth and disassembled it as I’d learned in the survival book. Cleaning it thoroughly with a rag and gun oil, I reassembled it, loaded the clip, put the remaining ammunition back into the safe and locked it.

  The gun I slid into the waistband of my shorts, the safety engaged.

  * * *

  On the fifth day, Cassie spoke again, surprising me out of a deep nap on the chaise at the side of the pool.

  “Can I go out on the boat today, just go around a little?” she asked. “I’m getting stir crazy.”

  Relieved to hear her speak, I shielded my eyes from the sun, peered up at her.

  “Not by yourself.”

  “Fine. Can we leave now?”

  “Okay. Give me fifteen minutes to visit the bathroom and grab my shoes.”

  * * *

  I made sure to head south and west once we were out on the water. She knew what I was doing and why, but chose to say nothing. The water was choppy, the wind as strong as it was atop the building, and the little boat bobbed and weaved on the undulating waves. Cassie sat at the bow of the craft, pointed out objects to me as I rowed.

  The afternoon sun, already past its zenith, cast shadows that fell deep into the spaces between the buildings, darkened the waters. It was cool here between the wrecks of the structures, in the shadows and the spray, and I relaxed a bit. At least my mind did; the rowing was strenuous work with the sea this rough.

  But soon I was in a rhythm, working the oars back and forth, following my daughter’s hand signals. We plied the waters south, keeping to what had been North Miami Avenue.

  There was no conversation today, no request for any retelling of the stories of her mother, the world before the deluge. Cassie was lost in her own thoughts, and I had no desire to pull a discussion from her for I knew what those thoughts were.

  The discovery of people made Cassie more aware of the present, the future. Stories about the vanished, unknowable past didn’t seem to carry the weight they once had with her.

  It happened near where the Miami Federal Courthouse was submerged. You could almost see the top of the building beneath the waves, shaped like the hull of a great, sunken ship. Much of the area here had been parking lots and low structures that were deep, deep below us now, giving the area the look of an actual, open sea.

  That’s where we saw them.

  Whether they were the same people or not, it was impossible to say, but they were definitely people. Perhaps four or five in a boat a little larger than ours, to the northeast, a mile or so away.

  My heart began to beat fast. Surely, if we could see them, they could see us. Too late to try hiding here on this open expanse of the inland sea, out here beneath the blazing sun.

  There was only fleeing, that was the only thing I could think to do. Flee, leave, run away.

  But not lead them back to our home.

  I rowed the boat around, just as Cassie stood.

  “Sit down, goddammit!” I huffed. “They’ll see you!”

  “I want them to see me!” she yelled back, defiantly turning and waving her arms over her head. “Hey! Over here! Over here!”

  “Cassandra!” I shouted, horrified at what she was doing, how vulnerable it left us. I didn’t think that they could actually hear her, but if they hadn’t seen us before, her frantic movements were sure to catch their attention.

  “Over here!”

  I began rowing south again, over the shipwreck of the court building, angling east. I’d follow Second Street, lose them hopefully before we got too close to where the college had been. Then I could concentrate on getting home.

  “Daddy, stop!” Cassie shouted, breaking my concentration. “I think they see us. I think they’re coming this way!”

  I stopped rowing, breathing harshly. I peered into the bright, shimmering distance. She was right. It looked as if they had turned their boat, pointed it directly at us.

  I panicked.

  I didn’t know what to do. They’d seen us. People, these or others, would search for us now, find us eventually.

  More afraid than I’d been since that day in the water when my wife’s hand slipped from mine, I stood. My motion upset the small craft, tossing Cassie into the boat.

  From the waistband of my shorts, I drew the nine-millimeter, which gleamed silver-white in the sun. I unlatched the safety, leveled it in the direction of the oncoming boat.

  Cassie, who had never seen an actual gun outside of a book, had no idea of its range or power. Shocked to see one now, here, in her father’s hands, she yelled, “Daddy, no!”

  Of course the gun wouldn’t reach their boat. Of course, that wasn’t what I was trying to do, well, not really. No, I hoped that the sound of its discharge would turn them aside, make them think twice about pursuing us, looking for us.

  So, I pulled the trigger, and the gun jumped in my hand three times.

  Each time, there was a flat, deafening roar from the thing, a roar that made Cassie fall to the bottom of the boat, cover her ears, scream.

  The shots sprang across the water, echoing in a thousand directions, until the sound became more than three shots. It was a barrage, a hail of bullets, thundering across the flat plane of the sea. Like thunder, their noise vibrated in the air, reverberated like a struck gong, literally stunning the silence into submission.

  When the last of the noise died away, I blinked, as if for the first time in my life. The gun felt like an iron weight in my hand, and the muscles of my forearm, appalled at the gun’s kick, quivered like a horse that had been ridden too long.

  Slowly, I lowered the pistol, the arc of its descent leaving a brilliant reflection in its wake.

  But I watched the boat, only the boat.

  And it looked as if it had stopped.

  Good.

  I thumbed the safety, placed it onto the seat beside me, sat and started to row again, fiercely, ignoring the burning pain in my shoulders, my chest.

  Cassie stayed curled on the floor of the boat, her eyes tightly shut, and I had to navigate back home on my own.

  We didn’t speak as we approached Biscayne Tower.

  Didn’t speak as we moored the boat.

  Didn’t speak as we ascended the steps, entered our apartment, our individual rooms.

  * * *

  I was awakened later that night from a sound sleep by the slipping of her hand through mine.

  The dream, the goddamn dream!

  My anguish at the dream, though, was swept aside as knowledge of the day’s events, what’d I’d done, flooded back over me.

  The gun.

  I sighed and it turned into a groan.

  Why had I fired the gun today?

  What if I’d actually hit someone, killed someone?

  Had I really only hoped to scare them away?

  Did I really think it would?

  And—

  Would it?

  Or would they really come looking for us now?

&nb
sp; I was clammy, soaked with sweat, yet at the same time, my mouth was dry.

  Throwing my feet over the side of the bed, I stood, prepared to go into the kitchen for a glass of water.

  A vivid blast of lightning surprised me, flashed through the blinds. A rumble of thunder followed on its heels.

  I felt the coldness of the air, heard the rain outside at the same time.

  Sourly, I opened my bedroom door, went into the hallway. Lightning threw shifting shadows, brief, almost phosphorescent, onto the walls. The flashes were so strong, so constant, the effect was like a strobe light.

  I put my hand out to the wall to steady myself, because the light made me dizzy.

  Passing her room, I saw her door was open again, and I paused in confusion.

  Another burst of lightning showed that the bed was unmade, unoccupied.

  Frowning, my dizziness became a twinge of nausea.

  Where was she?

  She wouldn’t have—

  Dear god!

  I raced back into my room, pulled on a pair of pants, slipped on sneakers with no socks. Almost an afterthought, I grabbed a waterproof jacket, shrugged into it as I snatched the emergency pack I’d given her, left there on a hook near the door to the stairs.

  Fumbling with the pack, I pulled the flashlight out, shone its light into the dark, endless shaft of the stairs, took a deep breath.

  “Cassie!” I roared at the top of my voice, my voice blasting into the emptiness, swallowed by it. “Cassie!”

  Before the echoes faded, I was racing down the stairs as fast as my legs—and my heart—would allow.

  * * *

  She had taken the boat sometime during the night, slipped away with a few of her things.

  To find them, to meet them.

  To be with them.

  I stood there in the little alcove where the boat was kept, stood there with the cold spray on my face and wept. It was too much like before, too much like losing her.

  Then, I remembered the other boat.

  I pushed through dark, chill water that was hip deep, found the little ledge under which I’d secured the bass boat. I checked, made sure the oars were tucked under the gunwales, tossed the emergency pack into it, hefted it down into the water.