by Kody Boye
“I figured as much.” Steve leaned forward to look out the living room window at the snow that continued to fall, now returning from its brief absence. “Was she wearing shoes?”
“I think so,” Dakota replied.
“I didn’t see her take any off,” Jamie said. “Then again, I wasn’t paying attention to her feet. I don’t think anyone was.”
“I wasn’t.”.
“All I know is that it’d suck to be walking around in the cold without shoes.” Steve drew his feet up onto the couch and tucking them beneath his thighs. “Not much we can do about it though. At least she’s safe.”
“And that’s all that matters,” Dakota said, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling, imagining how the snow would taste.
His mother used to tell him it was full of dirt.
But it falls from the sky.
Even now, looking at the ceiling, he wondered how freshly fallen snow wouldn’t be clean.
It was so perfect.
“I want to go with you,” Rose said.
“What?” Steve asked.
“I said,” she repeated, “I want to go with you. On the supply run.”
“You’ve only been here for a day,” Jamie said. “Are you sure you’re fit to go?”
“I’ve been fit to go since I got off that boat. I’ve got my land legs now.”
“Who all is going, Jamie?” Dakota asked. “If it’s me, you, Kevin and Rose—”
“That makes four of us,” Rose finished, sliding a hand into her fresh pair of jeans. She reached up to swipe a hand across her mouth before continuing. “There’s, what? Us, which makes three, then Steve and that kid, which makes five, then the guys in the other house, seven.”
“And Kevin and his two kids,” Dakota said. “Ten.”
“Four people leaving isn’t going to hurt anything. I say we go now before the snow starts up again.”
“She’s got a point,” Steve said. “You guys don’t want to get caught out in a snowstorm.”
“We also need something to heat the house with,” Rose said, stretching her arms over her head and starting toward the threshold. “That is, unless you plan on wearing long sleeves all winter.”
“What’s wrong with shirt sleeves?”
Steve’s stupid grin inspired a smile of Rose’s own. She stopped in midstride to turn and face him. “Nothing,” she said, her smile not dimming in the least, “but I’m sure you know they only go so far.”
“Trust me. I know.”
“Corpor—I mean, Jamie. When do we leave?”
“As soon as Kevin’s ready,” Jamie said, looking down at the map before them.
Dakota leaned forward to see it better. Circled in bold red ink were six individual stores, including what had once been one of the United States’ most famous superstores.
“You think it’s a good idea to go there?” Dakota asked.
“They’ll have seeds,” Jamie said, “and a gardening department.”
“Which means fresh veggies for us!” Steve laughed.
Dakota sighed.
Something in his gut gave him a bad feeling.
They sat in the red pickup in silence. Rose, Steve and Kevin sat in the back; he and Jamie in the front. Dakota looked out the window and watched the scenery roll by, depressed by the gloomy atmosphere of the once-suburban neighborhood. Though not touched by man in any way, physical contact need not be necessary to transform something beautiful into complete and utter chaos.
We’ve learned that lesson.
Nature was the one who always won in the end. Man never prevailed. This lesson had been taught several times over, when Mother Nature killed the dinosaurs and blew Pompeii to dust, and the scene before them showed such lessons. Already, after only two months without humans, plants were starting to creep outside their forced borders. Once-trim lawns grew in total disarray, waist-high grass shifted in the breeze, waving yellowing tips and curtsying to the living who passed, and shrubs bearing the former semblance of animals stretched toward the sky as though beckoning to the heavens, snow gracing their limbs, their needles crusted with ice. Cracks lined the road, unfilled or treated by trucks. Sewer systems made fjords in places low and curved, opening to rivers near the end of the road.
This place, this suburban neighborhood, would soon be gone.
In the end, nature always won.
“How long do you think it’ll take for all of this to be gone?” Dakota asked, tearing his eyes from the road.
“For what to be gone?” Jamie asked, glancing away from the road at Dakota.
“This. The world.”
“I don’t like to think about that,” Jamie said. “No point in it.”
Jamie pulled to a stop at the end of the road, then made a move to flip his turn signal on, but stopped before doing so. A smile touched his lips, and he turned to look at Dakota, then said, “To answer your question though, I don’t know. I’m still holding out hope that someone will get a handle on this whole mess.”
“You really think that’ll happen?” Rose asked. “Especially with the UK gone and all?”
“I don’t know,” Jamie said. “A man can have hope, right?”
Dakota nodded his agreement. A man could have all the hope in the world.
Sadly, he knew that sometimes, even the greatest amount of hope couldn’t move the strongest of walls.
“Steve?” Desmond asked. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“‘Course you can,” Steve said, drawing his attention away from the wall to look at the boy. “What’s up?”
“I’m…not sure how to begin,” the boy said nervously. Sighing, he opened his lips to speak, but stopped before saying a word. His face scrunched with confusion and his eyes were dampening by the second. Steve watched the boy struggle with whatever inner demon was festering inside him, each moment ticking by like a knife slowly sinking into his flesh.
Whatever it is, he thought, seating himself, it isn’t easy.
Then again, what did he expect? He’d never taken Desmond as someone to talk about whatever was bothering him. Always hanging off to the side, avoiding direct gazes, speaking only when necessary and commenting only when the mood was light and absent of tension—he exhibited the very definition of nervous, though whether that was because of whatever he wanted to talk about, Steve couldn’t be sure.
He kicked a leg up and set his calf against his knee, waiting for Desmond to speak.
The boy looked up. Steve forced a smile in response. “Take your time, Desmond,” he said. “I can wait.”
“It’s not that I want to.”
“I know. Some shit you just have to let come out.”
“I’ve been lying about what happened leading up to the day Jamie rescued me, Steve.”
“What?”
“You wouldn’t know,” Desmond said. “At least, I don’t think you would.”
“You were holed up in a photography store,” Steve said. “I remember.”
“I used to work there. Developing photos, fixing cameras, changing light bulbs, processing film, all that.”
“You ever work in a redroom?”
“That was where most of my time was spent, actually.” Desmond smiled. He reached up and ran a hand through his hair, though his expression changed the moment his fingers crested the curve of his neck. It was almost as though he were tracing a button on a sensitive console and trying not to push it. With two fingers poised and stiffened, he messaged the nodule of bone just above his spine, directly where the cord would have split off into the stem, and waited. “Steve?” he finally said.
“Yeah, buddy?”
“If I tell you something, will you keep it between us?”
“You know I will.”
“I’m gay.”
Steve blinked. Desmond’s expression would have made him laugh had the situation not been as severe. “Buddy,” he said, not able to contain the tinge of humor in his voice as he leaned forward. “You do know I’m bi, right?”
“I swing both ways, as they say.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Dakota didn’t either the first time I told him,” Steve laughed, leaning back into his seat. “He swore I was screwing with him.”
“Have you ever… you know…?”
“Been with a guy? Sure as hell have.”
“Were you and Dakota ever…”
“No. No matter how much I love the little fucker, I could never see him as anything more than just my best friend. Guess that’s what you get for befriending someone at such a young age.”
“I guess,” Desmond sighed, shaking his head. “I feel stupid for even bringing this up. It shouldn’t even matter anymore.”
“What shouldn’t?”
“The fact that Peter ran off on me.”
At this, Steve frowned and sunk even further back into his seat. Even more unsure of what to say than he had been the moment before, he watched the boy’s eyes for any indication as to what he should say next. Even a slight flicker across his pupils or a bat of an eyelash would have given him something to go on, at the very least.
What the hell am I supposed to say something like that?
Could you say something to that? ‘I’m sorry’ immediately came to mind, but would that even help? Simple pity didn’t seem appropriate in this situation, especially not with the current state in their world, so that was out of the question. He couldn’t grease the bearings with compassion or turn the wheels with any forward momentum, so just what could he do?
After what seemed like an eternity, a tear began to slide down Desmond’s face.
Steve paused, waiting.
Finally, Desmond raised his head and looked Steve directly in the eyes. That action alone was enough to tell Steve to move over to the other couch.
“Peter was my boyfriend,” Desmond said, scooting over when Steve settled in beside him. “The day everything started happening, I was in the redroom when I heard a crash and my boss screaming my name. That day, Peter had tagged along to see what I did at work because he’d only ever heard me talking about it, so when we heard Mr. Barnes calling out to me, I wasn’t sure what to say. He started for the door, but I told him to stop because I didn’t want the pictures to get overexposed.”
“That costs money,” Steve said.
Desmond wiped a tear from his cheek. “At that point, I didn’t think it was anything more serious than him just wanting to talk to me or to have me clean something he’d knocked over, so I started covering the pictures in preparation for whatever it was he wanted me to do. Then it got worse. He wasn’t just yelling anymore, he was screaming. Peter thought he might’ve gotten hurt and was freaking out. He kept trying to open the door, but that only frustrated me even more and I started yelling at him because I didn’t want the film to get destroyed.”
“What happened after that?”
“Me and Peter started yelling at each other. I got frustrated, and accidentally knocked a lamp over, spilling a bunch of developing fluid. It didn’t matter though. My panic over destroying company property was over when Mr. Barnes came bursting through the door with a woman chasing after him.”
“Was she one of them?”
“She was.”
“What happened when your boss got into the redroom?”
“He screamed for me and Peter to stay back while he tried to fight the woman off. She was stuck between the door and the wall, pinned there by Mr. Barnes, so he kept trying to kick her out of the room. We didn’t know what was going on, so me and Peter just stood there and watched, not sure what else to do. That’s when more of them started to rush into the store. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for them to hear the struggle and rush forward.”
“How’d you guys fight them off?”
“Peter finally got a hold of himself and grabbed a camera I’d been trying to fix. I think his point was to try and stun her with the flash, but that didn’t work because the wiring leading up to the bulb was fucked. I’d told him not to mess with that camera because I knew it was dangerous, but at that moment, I couldn’t do much about it. When he clicked the trigger, the wiring shorted out and the bulb exploded. The broken pieces when flying into the woman’s eyes and gave Barnes just enough time to push her away and lock the door.”
Desmond bowed his head, chest rising and falling with what seemed like physical exhaustion. Steve set an arm across the young man’s shoulder and pulled him close.
“Sorry this is taking so long,” Desmond said.
“Just let it out.”
“I’ll just cut to the chase. The zombies eventually got distracted by something outside the store and ran off. We stayed holed up in the redroom for two days, and we didn’t know what was going on. Mr. Barnes opened the door to see if the coast was clear then, and it didn’t take long for us to notice something was wrong when there were three or four bodies stripped to the bone lying in the road, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered after that point, because when Barnes went out to try and get food, he got ambushed. They came out of the convenience store right next to us and ripped him apart. Peter…when he saw that, when we saw that, he couldn’t take it. Something inside him snapped. He ran.”
“What’d you do?”
“I tried to go after him, but the zombies saw me and rushed the store. There was no way I could’ve outrun them that early on, because they were still fresh and running, so my only choice was to lock the front door and run back into the redroom.” A tremble started at his very core and began to spread throughout his body. Arms shaking, chest heaving and lip quivering, Desmond shook his head like a dog tearing a piece of meat from its kill and splashed hot tears across Steve’s face and arms. “I didn’t know what to do,” he said, tears coursing down his face. “I couldn’t follow him, Steve. The zombies were already on me by the time I ran back into the store and locked the front door. They tried to fight me for it. The only reason I was able to lock it was because they’d pulled it back into place. I couldn’t. I tried. The zombies split off and Peter—”
“It’s ok,” Steve said, bringing Desmond into his arms just in time for the boy to lose it. “There wasn’t anything you could do, Desmond. You were trapped. You couldn’t have helped him.”
“I should’ve tried!” the boy screamed. “I should’ve fucking tried, but the bastard ran away from me! WE could’ve stayed in the store and waited for help! Armstrong came two days later, two motherfucking days later!”
“You can’t help what he did.”
“I could’ve tried!”
“And what would you have done?” Steve asked, pushing the boy away to look in his face. “How would you have gotten back to the store?”
“We could’ve holed up somewhere else.”
“What if you couldn’t have caught him? What if they came out of a side alley and got both of you, huh? What if they got him and you couldn’t find anywhere else to stay? What if you had been trapped out in the street and couldn’t do anything else but run?”
“I DON’T KNOW!” Desmond cried, throwing himself from the couch. “That’s just it! I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!”
“You can’t blame yourself for something someone else did, Desmond,” Steve said, standing. He reached forward to try and grab the boy’s arm, to still his quaking body and to comfort his aching heart, but stopped when the younger man lashed out.
Steve raised his arms to cover his face.
Fists ablaze, Desmond struck him in the chest not once or twice, but three times. Steve had it in him to take the onslaught of punches for as long as he could so long as his face was covered, but when the boy struck him in the ribs hard enough to knock the air from his lungs, he stumbled back and raised his hands above his head. “Desmond,” he gasped, air shooting from his lungs even as he tried to recapture it. “I’m not your enemy, Desmond! Stop!”
“You don’t know,” the boy said, tears streaming down his face. “You don’t know!”
“Of course I don’t k
now! I haven’t really lost anything!”
“What?”
“My parents were dead long before this happened,” Steve explained. He braced himself for Desmond to rush forward and hit him again, then slowly lowered his hands when the boy didn’t move. “The day they came, the day everything changed, when I realized what was happening, I ran across the street and pulled Dakota into my apartment because I had absolutely no one else to go to. That day, I pulled my best friend from his foster home and dragged him across the street, into my apartment and boarded the door up with as much shit as I could. I’ve lost absolutely nothing, because the one and only person I care about was right there with me when the world went to hell. I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been going through.”
“I… I just… I just don’t understand. Why couldn’t he have just stayed with me? Why, Steve? WHY? He said we would run away together and find our own life the day I turned eighteen. He promised me! He promised me that everything would be all right and that he would give me everything I never had today!”
“You… today is your birthday?” Steve asked.
“YES!” Desmond screamed. “YES!”
“Why didn’t you tell us before, Desmond? Why have you been keeping this inside you for so long?”
“Because I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of facing it,” the boy said. “Of finally, truly knowing that Peter’s dead and I can’t do anything about it.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“What does it matter even if he’s alive?” Desmond asked, swiping his nose with his hand. “Even if he is alive, we’re hundreds of miles away now, there’s zombies everywhere, and winter’s coming. There’s probably three feet of snow up there right now. If he hasn’t frozen to death already, he’s been eaten by zombies, starved to death or killed himself. He’s dead, Steve. And even if he is alive, I don’t want to know. I can’t imagine him living a life of hell.”
Steve stepped forward. Trembling, hurt and very near tears himself, he brought the boy into his arms and locked his hands at his back, digging his fingers into his shirt and forcing the two of them together.