by Dan Kemp
"You shouldn't be here," he said, an air of amusement in his voice. It was indeed him, the same man she remembered from her dreams.
"No," she said. "But here I am."
Jess
The city was nearly unrecognizable.
Jess killed the engine of her car before climbing out and slamming the door behind her. It was a rusty old sedan, one she'd stolen at the first possible opportunity after her descent off the mountain late last night. Outside the cities, the highways were clear and travel was quick.
Nearer to Pittsburgh, the highway became cluttered with broken-down and otherwise abandoned vehicles. Here, at the edge of a bridge crossing into the city proper, her path finally became impassable.
She squinted and shielded her tired eyes against the climbing morning sun. Just ahead, the bridge was walled off with a rickety barricade of metal and wood. There was no one else in sight.
Jess grabbed the end of a wood plank and heaved until it cracked and pulled away. She brushed her hands against her pants before squeezing between the gap. There was still no sign of anyone on the other side of the barricade. Ahead, past the arcing yellow metal beams and wires of the bridge, downtown Pittsburgh stretched across her field of view. The city's skyline looked as though it had been leveled at its midsection, its tallest buildings crumbling or seemingly missing entirely.
She walked across the bridge in silence. In better times, it might have been a pleasant scene. The river rolled lazily past below, the sun glinting off its surface. Now though, the sheer emptiness and quiet of the place sent a shiver up her spine, and she had the disconcerting feeling that someone was watching her. If someone was, they didn’t emerge as she reached the halfway point of the bridge and came to a stop.
At her feet, where the bridge should have been, was a gaping chasm. There was at least twenty feet of emptiness between her and the other side, where broken stone and pipes dangled from the exposed foundation of the bridge. Looking down, she could see the outline of the fallen section of bridge under the water. A quick glance to her sides confirmed what she suddenly feared; all the bridges into the city had been destroyed.
Crap.
Jess ran back the way she had come, clambering over the side of the bridge when she reached the roadway once again. The slope was steep but she kept her feet, sliding and stumbling down to the bottom. With a running start she dove and hit the water, which was surprisingly warm.
Several minutes later Jess hauled herself up the opposite bank, panting and soaked. She shook the water free from her arms and legs. Nearby, a steep set of old stairs led back up to the city so she started up, gathering her hair and wringing it out as she went.
The city seemed to be entirely abandoned. Jess made her way from street to street, picking a path through the piles of rubble which were scattered across most of the roadways. Her memories of patrolling these same streets felt like a distant blur. This was only worsened by the recent strain on her mind. She was still getting used to her new self, and thousands of years of memory pressed heavily on the back of her mind. She didn't want all of that. She only wanted to be herself, Jess, and to find Rachel.
As Jess moved deeper into downtown, she noticed some of the roads had been partially cleared. There were other signs of humanity, too. She saw a long clothesline strung between two pillars, the only remnants of an old bank. A motorcycle leaned against a still-standing stop sign, the bike clean in stark contrast to the few other half-buried vehicles on the streets. Still though, no other person could be seen.
She found the first body immediately after rounding the next corner. Jess leapt back in shock at the sight of it, lying right at her feet. He was a young man, sprawled out face down on the sidewalk. The concrete was stained red from his dried blood. Jess moved on, going no more than ten feet before she found another, this one bent over a concrete median. There was a black handgun lying at his feet. She picked it up, checking the magazine. Loaded.
Thanks.
The market square, one block away, was a battlefield. Dozens of dead men and women were strewn about. Bullet holes marked most of the remaining walls of the surrounding buildings. An equal number of pistols, rifles and shotguns lay near many of the corpses, some still gripped firmly in their hands. Jess pocketed a couple of the fuller magazines, then let her eyes linger briefly on the carnage of the scene before moving on. Whatever had happened here, it was recent. And if anyone in the city was left alive, they weren't here.
She walked along the riverfront for a time, forced to take a roundabout route due to a road made impassable by towering rubble. Two small boats were tethered at a nearby dock. They bobbed and rolled with the current, on occasion bumping against the dock with a mournful creak.
After a while, Jess left the riverside path to return once again to the city streets. She was further from the city center now and, though the signs of catastrophe were still in evidence, some blocks looked almost untouched. Rusted but otherwise undamaged cars were still parked bumper-to-bumper along the sides of the road. Some store windows still displayed signs reading "Open," while others had clearly been abandoned in haste. Still others, typically the more useful ones such as pharmacies or hardware stores, were thoroughly looted.
She turned off the main thoroughfare onto a peaceful residential street. Some of the grass and trees were still green here, while other areas were scorched and blackened. Some homes stood in ruins. All, as far as she could see, were empty.
A shot rang out as she walked, the bullet tearing a divot into the asphalt a few feet ahead of her. Jess ducked and scrambled to cover behind the nearest car. She slipped her own gun from her waistline and readied it, scanning the buildings across the street for any sign of the shooter.
No other shots followed, but the home straight across the road caught her eye. Its door was fortified with layered boards nailed across its frame. Never a normal sight in a suburban neighborhood.
Jess took aim at one of the upstairs windows of this home and fired three quick shots before sprinting out from behind the car and across the street. Two more bullets hit the asphalt, narrowly missing her legs as she ran. She slammed into the door, which held fast and sent her reeling back with a sharp pain in her shoulder. Jess shook the injured arm before rearing back for a kick at the doorknob. Again, the door didn't budge.
She took a step back from the door and tried to clear her mind. Jess dug deep inside of herself and into the earth itself, drawing strength out of the ground she stood upon. Inside her mind, she fought to tame that destructive force, shaping it to her needs, then unleashed it from her hands. The door shot off its hinges and flew into the entryway of the home in a cloud of flame and splinters.
Jess slid inside to see a man hit the ground nearby, sent tumbling by the force of the blast. He appeared unharmed though, and was reaching for his rifle, which had clattered to the hardwood floor nearby. Jess jumped atop him, kicking the rifle away and pressing his chest to the ground with her foot.
He was young, no more than twenty-five, with shoulder-length wiry brown hair. Overgrown but patchy facial hair spotted his cheeks. He strained against her but Jess pushed him back down.
"Don't hurt me!" he cried out.
"You shot at me,” she said.
"Well, y-yeah," he stuttered. "I was just scared though."
Jess eyed him hard. He avoided her gaze, and his look was one of genuine fear. Jess felt her anger dull somewhat.
"Don't move," she said before lifting her boot off his chest. She scooped his rifle off the floor and laid it upright against the wall near the broken doorway. "Alright, get up. Slowly."
She kept her pistol aimed at him as he got slowly up to his knees and then his feet, hands up all the while. He backed up and sat down on a floral couch behind him. Only then did Jess let her gun down.
"I thought you were coming for me," he said.
"Yeah, well, you could have killed me. And I didn't even know you were here. So I wasn't coming for you."
"I'm sorry," he
offered.
"What's your name?"
"Mike."
"I'm Jess." He didn't reply. "What happened downtown?"
He laughed to himself. "I don't even know where to start." Jess shrugged and took a seat in a recliner across from him.
"The city didn't do well after it happened, whatever it was. It happened so fast, I don't know how many even had a chance to run. After, some people got some teams together, search and rescue parties. There were less than three hundred people left alive downtown." Jess felt a pit form in her stomach. "South side and the north shore, probably more, but we didn't know."
"A lot of people left then, still thinking that whatever happened was only here. Took a long time to realize this happened everywhere else too. But those of us who stayed, we wanted to rebuild. It was hard, though. Not much food, no running water, no power. A couple of guys kind of took control. After we found out there were fucking dinosaurs running around out there for some reason, they blew out the bridges. Between that and barricading the roads, we were mostly protected from the outside."
"Things started to break down pretty quick. The first fight was about the prisoners in the jail. Somehow it was totally untouched by the storms. It only took a couple days for the inmates to take over the place, and with no electricity to keep them locked in we had to barricade them inside. Some of us wanted to negotiate, try to let them out. Others said we should just keep them locked up. We tried one negotiation, didn't go too well, so that was that. Argument over. They all starved to death."
"What side were you on?" Jess asked.
"Does it matter?" he said, but there was pain in his eyes.
"Anyway, we moved past it. But the damage was done, I think. We were basically trapped in this city, and over time we fought more and more. It finally boiled over I guess."
"How many are left alive?" Jess asked.
"You're the first person I've seen since. Hard to imagine I'm the only one left, but who knows. I've just been hiding in here for a few days. Trying to figure out what I'm gonna do. Now that you fucked up my door, I guess I'll move on."
"I'm sorry," Jess said, glancing over at the still-smoking doorway.
"So what were you doing?"
"I lived here. I was a cop. I was out of town when it happened," she lied. "I had to come back and see."
"Must have been far away if it took you two years to get back," Mike said.
"I guess you wouldn't know, but it's pretty bad out there. I'm lucky to be here at all. Anyway, my girlfriend was here. I need to find her." Jess stood up.
She saw in his face a brief confusion which gave way to a somewhat forced, overeager attempt at a casual nod. It wasn't an uncommon reaction to the mention of her having a girlfriend, a brief visceral uncertainty followed by the realization that this was normal and something that shouldn't seem strange. It amused Jess more than offended her.
"Where did she live?" he asked.
"Two blocks that way," she said, pointing.
"Good luck," he said, but his grimace betrayed him.
"Yeah, you too." She stuck out a hand, which he shook.
Jess left, back out onto the street, and broke into a jog. One block passed, then the next. It was as she feared. As she went, the damage grew worse and worse. She took her last few steps in a daze, and suddenly found herself standing across the street from her apartment, or where it had once stood.
Hers, and most others on the street, were reduced to no more than foundations and piles of ash. Along the side, the rickety old wooden stairs somehow remained. They ascended to nowhere, the wood charred and twisted.
Jess crossed the road and vaulted over the concrete into the ruins of what had been her living room. The couch was a barely-recognizable cinder sitting across from a pool of broken glass and metal that had been their TV. She waded through the soot and rubble. There was nothing left. A tear fell from her cheek to the ashen floor.
In her bedroom a splash of color beneath the dust caught her eye. She knelt over it, tossing away a few splinters of wood laying over top. It was a photo, one she immediately recognized, though its edges were singed and crumpled. In the background, the blue expanse of Niagara Falls could be seen. In the fore, Rachel smiled, her head on Jess's shoulder. Jess's own face had been burned away. Jess wiped another tear from her cheek and slipped the photo into her pocket.
She stepped down onto the sidewalk again. Her mind was in a fog, and her hands were numb. Jess leaned against the small crumbled wall that had been her home and sobbed, her chest heaving and tears streaming down her face. Deep down she had known this was what she would find, but still Jess had hoped for something more. Either way, she had needed to see it for herself, but the reality of it all was no less painful.
After a while, the tears stopped and her breathing slowed. She squeezed her eyes, sore from crying, shut and then opened them again, blinking away the tears blurring her vision. She had to move forward, and she had to have hope.
There was, though to even consider the idea brought a piercing pain to her chest, at least no sign of Rachel in the house. No body. And, Jess only noticed now, Rachel's car was gone.
James
James mostly kept to himself in those days.
Overall things went on for him as they always had. He roamed the land hunting and foraging. Now and then, he would find a peaceful spot and settle down, making it his home for years at a time before moving on. He was his own sole companion.
These were more peaceful times as well. After the time of the dinosaurs, smaller, furrier and generally more docile creatures reigned. He still had occasional run-ins with some of the more dangerous predators, but even these often seemed far more afraid of him than he was of them. One thing was different now, though. He was no longer truly alone on this planet.
At first they were scattered and easily avoided, but over time the spread of humanity made it harder and harder for him to stay away. James still hadn't made any attempt to interact with anyone else. Though he didn't even fully understand what he had done, he felt a profound sense of guilt over what had happened when he met that woman. James had simply been overwhelmed by his own primal urges, which previously had no outlet at all.
His desire for the companionship of his own kind never faded though, and so when they had multiplied and spread across the land so far that he could run from them no longer, he contented himself for a while to watch. James had long ago become very skilled at moving unseen and unheard, so he could easily linger in the trees quite close to their villages and still go unnoticed.
Watching them fascinated him. Simply by virtue of living with others, they quickly developed skills he had never conceived of. They communicated with each other using spoken sounds. It took him so long to understand their language simply by listening and observing that by the time he could comprehend most of it, their language had changed so much he had to start again.
Despite this, they struggled with things James had long before mastered. They wore rudimentary garments at best and struggled to make even an adequate shelter. Though they excelled at foraging in the brush for berries and seeds, their primitive weapons made hunting a dangerous challenge. In the winter, they would grow thin and huddle together for warmth. The old and the young would often die.
This last discovery was most confusing to him. Of course death was not a revelation to him, having seen it countless times in animals over the years. Yet he himself had survived unknowable lengths of time without eating, exposed to the cold and the heat, and never died.
Even stranger, these people were born very small and helpless, over time growing to full size. After a while they would shrivel with age and die. James couldn’t remember ever being anything other than what he was, never a child. Over the innumerable years, the face he saw reflected in a lake or stream had not changed in the slightest. He began to wonder if these people were not quite the same as him after all, though their outward appearance was identical.
It wasn't just the passage of time wh
ich affected them differently. Once, he saw a young man gored on the tusk of a wild boar. The man staggered back to his village, bleeding and clutching at his spilling guts. Yet rather than quickly healing as James would have, the man fell ill, wild and delirious, before dying two days later.
Watching their struggles inspired in him a desire to help. Seeing them hurting, starving, and dying truly hurt him as well. It seemed to James that these people were like him, only younger and less experienced, and it was his responsibility to share with them what he knew. If they were somehow different after all, somehow weaker than him, or didn't share whatever strange powers he had, this was only more reason for him to help however he could. Yet he was still too afraid to interact with them directly.