Sorrow

by Brian Wortley

  Val dreamed only of roads in her sleep. She saw her two worn feet gliding over their dusty surfaces and woke feeling unrested. The days turned into weeks and finally Val was forced to hold another council.

  Val glanced over her companions sitting in a circle around her. She opened up the meeting, “How much food do we have left?” Several weeks ago, she placed two seemingly trustworthy soldiers in charge of rationing the food.

  One of the men tossed a backpack to the ground at Val’s feet. “That’s it,” he replied.

  “How long has it been since we saw even a gas station?” Andrea asked.

  “I hate to say it,” replied Val, “but I think it’s coming up on a month.”

  “Food,” Connor said, “is a secondary item. If we can find out where we are, we can find food. We need to get to a city.”

  Miraculously, Val was tired enough to permit Connor to say such a thing even though it bore a hint of leadership in it.

  “What about eating the zombies we kill?” one of the soldiers from the back yelled. Everyone turned to look at him. “You’re all thinking it. I’m just saying it!”

  “How could you suggest something like that?” Val yelled. “I, for one, am never going to turn zombie no matter how hungry I get.”

  “Has anyone here ever really been hungry?” Tom, one of Jordan’s men asked. “Like, ‘I’m going to die if I don’t eat’ hungry?”

  No one answered.

  “It changes things,” Tom continued. “It’s like your whole lens of life changes.”

  “Oh,” Val answered, “and you would know, would you?”

  “Happened to me once. I was backpacking with a friend and we lost the trail in a storm. Wandered out in the wilderness for thirty-five days before I found someone.”

  “Did you eat your friend?” asked the man next to him.

  “No. But there were times I wanted to. You can’t get food off your mind. The twisting of your stomach is worse than any pain you’ve ever felt.” Tom looked around at everyone. “We’ve all got guns. When it comes down to the last bits of food, things are going to get nasty.”

  “This isn’t helping anyone,” Val interrupted. “If the time comes, we’ll act like civilized human beings and help each other out as best we can.”

  “Said like someone who hasn’t been there,” Tom snapped.

  Val wanted to shoot him. In her mind she saw his head flinging backwards from the impact of her bullet. She turned away from him to stop the thought. The sensation scared her. Apparently her trigger finger had gone to her head.

  “Let’s spread out more,” Val suggested, “that way we won’t walk past a road or building without knowing it. Even if we can stumble across a farmhouse or something, there should be food in it. I know it’s safer to stay within sight of each other but I think as long as we’re within shouting range we’ll be ok.”

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙ ∙

  Three more days passed without sign of civilization. The food, meager as it was, finally came down to the last day’s portion. When Val and Moses received their portions, they found Sara.

  “Here,” Val said handing her the food. “Eat this.”

  “Val, I’m not eating your food.”

  “I’m not going over this again. You’re pregnant! Eat it!”

  “And here is mine,” Moses said holding it out for her to grab.

  Sara took it knowing she’d lose this fight.

  “We’re going to die out here,” Val whispered. “There’s nothing in all directions. No plants grow in this hell. There’s no sunlight. I haven’t even seen our mysterious friends in days. Moses, you seem to know so much about them. Ask them to bring us food!”

  “I cannot,” he replied solemnly. “I don’t know who they are or how to ask them anything.”

  “Well, how do you know who they are then?” Val asked.

  “Brady told me,” Moses replied.

  Sara tensed even at the mention of this.

  “What do you mean, Moses?” Val asked.

  “Sometimes he tells me things.”

  “How?” Val asked.

  “I don’t know how to say it any other way. Sometimes he speaks to me.”

  “I think you've been out in the sun a little too long, Moses,” Sara replied.

  Moses made no reply.

  “Can you see anything, Sara?” Val asked. “Anything that might help us.”

  “Nothing,” Sara said softly. “The only advantage I have is I see who gets to die.”

  “Are we going to make it?” Val asked.

  Sara bowed her head and would not answer.

  The endless days wore on. A relentless hunger seized everyone. Their shaking leader stumbled forward in the wild. Her bony hand dangled at her side still thinking it grasped the machete it dropped miles ago. The skin sagged over the peaks of her arm bones. With her other hand she held Sara’s hand. Sara held Moses’ hand who held Chuck’s hand. All four wandered forward through the dust barely aware of reality. The dust swirled about in the wind making alien patterns across her eyes. She fought the demons of the sand and endured their howling voices.

  Not until her face came crashing against a wall did Val realized a structure stood before her. She looked up in dizzy acknowledgement of its presence. Her mind took a moment to grasp the full meaning of what she saw and recognize it as a farmhouse.

  Val jerked Sara’s hand and Sara turned to look up at the sunken skull that took the place of Val’s face. Through her sunken eyes Val did her best to relay the hope before her. Sara finally looked beyond Val’s body to the structure beyond her.

  Val managed to summon the remainder of her energy and frantically threw open the door. Val ravaged the kitchen and located bags of basic cooking ingredients. She threw one full of rice at Sara when she entered. Sara tore open the top and began devouring the uncooked grains of rice. In only a moment, Sara stopped herself and began feeding Chuck. Val grabbed her hand and pointed to Sara.

  Sara ate under Val’s furious gaze. Only after Sara ate several handfuls, did Val allow her to give some to Chuck and others.

  While the others ate, Val searched the upstairs for anything valuable. She found a bedroom boasting tattered blankets. She was examining them to see if they could possibly eat them when she saw a figure at the door. A startled Val whirled around to face it but she recognized it as Connor’s haggard body dwarfed between the doorframes. With his shackled hands cupped together to make a bowl, he held his portion of rice. She paid him no attention but continued examining the bedding. Connor stumbled up to her and fell to his knee before her.

  Val looked at him in apathetic annoyance but he kept pressing his hands up to her. She looked down and realized he offered her his rice. The gesture sliced through her defenses the way nothing else could. Her hunger wore away all her apathy and hatred of the man kneeling before her.

  And, if for only a moment, he touched her heart. She slumped down on the side of the bed. Her sunken face leaned in only inches away from him. She reached into the rice but found she shook so badly, it spilled out of his hand. She stopped in frustration and looked away. Connor poured the rice into her shirt and then leaned up against her. He picked up a few of the grains and hovered there before her mouth. She looked at him and opened letting him drop them onto her tongue.

  In this manner, he fed her all his rice. And for the first time in months, she looked on him with something other than hatred. When he placed the last of it in her mouth, she even leaned over and rested her skull upon his shoulder bones. He breathed out slowly and rested his head against hers. His heart raced just to feel her close again. Her breathing became slow and deep until he was convinced she slept – an event he did not take lightly.

  The scared company slept hidden away from the wretched winds pounding against the house.

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙ ∙

  When Val woke several hours later, she found Connor resting against the bed beside her. Waking up next to him reminded her of earlier times. She sof
tly rose to her feet and went off to find Sara. What she saw when she entered, forced her to pause at the door. Chuck’s head rested in her lap as Sara leaned back against the headboard. Sara’s shirt was undone and her withered breast clung to Chuck’s lips.

  As Val approached, she knew immediately Chuck had died. A sickly pale green resided in his sunken skin. With a bony finger Sara traced the valleys of his body in love. Tear tracks carved light patterns through the dirt on her cheeks.

  Val knelt to see into Sara’s face. Her sullen eyes bore so little life. They seemed eclipsed by a dark shadow.

  “Dead,” Val said pointing to the boy. Sara made no reply.

  Val approached trying to take the boy off her body. Sara violently grabbed her hands and threw them back. Val tried to fight her but Sara had eaten and seemed much stronger. Not until Connor helped her could they overpower her and take the dead child from her.

  Connor forced Sara downstairs while Val gently laid Chuck on the bed. She stood for a moment over him wondering why he died now when they found food. Reverently, she draped the sheets over him and closed the door to the room forever.

  Stricken by grief, Sara stormed out of the building. Moses, who sat by the door, managed to grab her wrist on the way out. The mood of the room told him something horrible happened. The two ran into the dusty outdoors a little ways before Sara collapsed gasping in agony.

  She refused Moses’ embrace at first kicking him away to be alone. He sat blindly listening to her sob and moan for hours. When he attempted to embrace her again, his fingers encountered a wet sensation. Though Sara tried to stop him, Moses screamed until Andrea came out of the house to check on him.

  Andrea stopped cold in her tracks when she looked at Sara. Looking up from tear-soaked eyes, Sara met Andrea’s gaze. Andrea, in shock, took Sara’s bloody hands.

  “What have you done?” Andrea asked yanking the kitchen knife out of Sara’s hand.

  Andrea yelled until several more came out to help. Soon several stood around in a circle casting unbelieving gazes down towards Sara. The silence remained unbroken as they examined Sara’s bloody belly where she’d tried to cut out her unborn child.

  All were shocked at what Sara had attempted. Val examined her finding she’d done no damage to her child but only cut her own skin and muscle. Sara refused to speak and as soon as Val let go of her, Sara flopped over to her right side and wept alone.

  Val told everyone to leave the two of them alone. Val knelt beside Sara and placed her hand on her.

  “Why?” Val asked in her gravely parched voice. But Sara only continued sobbing and would give no answer.

  When the two finally came back into the house, Val looked at the pathetic group. Sunken skeleton eyes stared back at her from inset sockets. Death hovered over them. Even Val could see that.

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙ ∙

  Val instructed Moses to carry Sara and they left. Most drifted in and out of consciousness waking to find themselves miraculously still walking. Only hours later, Val rose her weary head to see titans looming in the sand. She thought, at first, she hallucinated the beings towering above her withered frame. She stopped and tottered back and forth squinting her eyes. Only then did she realize the titans, jutting from the sand, to be buildings. A smile crossed her crusty, broken lips. Val shook Sara’s hand and soon the entire company looked up to the structures before them.

  A frantic excitement seized them and the withered company ran to the nearest buildings in a desperate search of food. Despite its size, the town boasted a well-stocked supply of food and bottled water. Many ate far too quickly and ended up throwing up much of what they foolishly devoured. Val instructed them to eat in small portions to help their bodies readjust.

  They remained in the town for four days eating and resting. As luck would have it, they encountered only minimal enemies. The company might have stayed longer but they woke one morning to find hazy sunlight streaking through the windows. They stepped outside, and for the first time in months, found sunlight illuminating the landscape. The sandstorm had finally ended.

  With their miserable wanderings in the sandstorm completed, Sara counted the days as best she could and believed she teetered on the threshold of her third trimester.

  Connor found the name of the town and located it on one of the maps. Connor happily announced it was close to the Texas-Louisiana border.

  The world they found awaiting them had changed drastically. As the sands cleared, they were confronted with an entirely different earth. The previously drab landscape now displayed a beaten down appearance. The struggling vegetation that existed before had been annihilated by the lack of sunlight and harsh conditions. Stems and tree trunks stripped of their leaves now littered the landscape. Deep chasms ripped into the land torn by the ferocious wind. More and more Val began to see similarities between the landscape of the moon and the world around her. It wasn’t uncommon to see house-sized boulders falling from the sky. Large valleys, caused by falling asteroids and collapsing mountains, littered the terrain. The once level landscape became far apart and in between.

  Now that the sandstorms lifted, the company squinted to keep from damaging their eyes. At first they thought their eyes would adjust to the sunlight, but as time progressed it became apparent something terrible happened to their beloved sun. It blazed with an unusual brilliance of color and intensity. Its normal yellow radiance burned with tints of blue and purple. Val became convinced the earth’s atmosphere stood on the verge of failure. Like a vise, she felt the void of space squeezing in on them.

  The intense sunlight continued for a few days until they became witnesses to a majestic sight. Sara became the first to notice it. Miles behind them she observed a part of the sky turning a yellow tint. With intensity far greater than the nuclear explosion from before, an enormous streak of fiery light came screaming down. As if a rafter in the sky caught fire, they saw an enormous stretch of flames crash down onto the earth. When it did, the intense sunlight dissipated and the sun returned to its usual post-apocalyptic gloom.

  Now that they could see normally again, Val looked over her troops. What she found startled her.

  “Eh,” she said addressing her company. “Ya’ll are uglier than when we started!”

  “Really?” Connor mocked. “Ya’ll? Just because we’re in Texas you think you can pull that off?”

  Val thought for a moment before answering. “Yes,” she said with a sly smile. She could not think of any better comeback.

  If Sara’s lips were capable of smiling, she would have smirked at such an interaction between Val and Connor. But as things were, she only watched intently from her deep set eyes.

  The men of the company seemed more like mountain men with their unshaved beards and shaggy hair. Val grew excited when she first realized her hair started growing again. Besides the initial reactions, they had suffered little else from the radiation. It now seemed like a distant memory to her. Even the comfortable hotel beds from months ago and their bizarre hosts seemed like another life. Colorado Springs seemed altogether forgotten. All that crossed their minds was endless miles of desolation.

  The spectacle in the sky deeply shook Val. Though she tried not to show it, she expected outer space to be their inevitable downfall. In her mind, she saw an earth completely devoid of life and air.

  As they travelled, Moses seemed to grow more agitated. It became common for him to startle them during the night with horrible dreams. He shared privately with Val that he wondered if the chemicals affected his brain. He swore he was slowly losing his memory and possibly going insane.

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙ ∙

  By the time they reached one of the border towns, the company decided to celebrate by spending the rest of the day and night there. Even just the thought of celebrating anything seemed unusual to them now. The pleasure of such a thought ricocheted through the troops.

  The company took up residence in one of the buildings and Val took up her hobby of sniping on the roof.
Most the company spent the day sleeping. It was late that afternoon when the first people emerged from the building to make a run on the local store for supplies. Val found the resistance in the town to be fairly typical. It was enough to keep her occupied when she wanted something to do, but posed little threat to them.

  Val leaned her chair on its back two legs and breathed a sigh of relief to be done with the sandstorms. She had hated the sandstorms more than most and remained convinced she’d live the rest of her life in paranoia because of them. Any unusual noise still sent her reeling. About an hour later, she woke to the sound of the troops returning from their shopping trip. Val couldn’t remember when she dozed off but was glad to be awake again.

  As she woke, she became aware of a curious dream. To her amazement, she dreamed of Connor. The two of them lived back in the cabin in the Rocky Mountains. The air was crisp and smelled of apples. Val found this last bit curious. When she thought of apples, the remembrance of their sugary flavor almost drove her mad. She looked around as if one might magically happen to be on the rooftop. She distinctly remembered it being fall in the dream. The aspen trees were just turning their bright colors of red and yellow. As she journeyed deeper into the memory, she remembered something strange about Connor. Although she couldn’t put her finger on it entirely, she remembered how deeply she missed him. And to her surprise, she missed him still. They were newlyweds. Young and in love. The world, though broken, stretched out before them.

  Val let a smile cross her face before she caught herself. Cautiously she glanced around to make sure no one saw her.

  “Oh Señora!” she heard a voice below her say.

  Moving to the edge of the roof, she saw Connor leaning against a wall in the street below. Andrea stood beside him and the two of them held a guitar. The instrument hung strapped to Andrea, but Connor strummed the strings with his shackled hands while Andrea moved her fingers to produce the chords.

  Connor started a song to Val but had to break to inform Andrea on where to place her fingers for the next chord. With her fingers on the right strings, Connor once again looked up proudly and strummed until the next chord change. The whole scene brought a smile to Val’s face.