Selected Stories

by Nate Southard

  Jerry raised the bat over his head and roared as he brought it down, cracking the lumber over the bag’s skull. Vibrations rocketed up his arms. The wood splintered, and the angel let out a horrible shriek of pain.

  The strength drained out of Jerry in a sudden rush. He fell to his knees and collapsed forward, vomiting over the floor of Marshall’s tobacco barn.

  “Mother of shit, Jerry!”

  He threw up again, his body pinching in half as his muscles betrayed him. He had no other response. He felt tears spill down his cheeks, cooling his hot flesh. He heard the bag’s agony-filled moans over the roar of blood in his ears. He felt Marshall’s hands on his shoulders, patting him, trying to calm and comfort.

  “It’s okay, Jerry. Son of a bitch deserves it.”

  He looked up at the bag, the ruined form of bruised flesh and broken bone that hung limp from the cuffs around its wrists. Blood ran from a gash in its forehead, a split of skin he was responsible for. The thing they called the bag used to be beautiful, an angel. Now, it was something else, something spoiled and used up, clinging to some semblance of purpose and life.

  “I’m not sure anymore,” he whispered. He pulled his forearm across his mouth, wiping his lips clean. He wanted to look away from the bag, but found he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  He thought about Nancy. She was probably at her sister’s place by now. Her sister had a nice place, a good job. Maybe she’d be better off there.

  He rose to his knees. The angel looked up to meet his gaze with its one good eye, peering out from behind bloody features. It didn’t look pissed off or even grateful that its beating was finished. It looked tired and pained, but more than that, it looked sorry, understanding. Forgiving.

  “You okay?” Marshall’s voice had gone quiet, only slightly louder than a breath.

  “Why do we do it?” Jerry asked the bag. “Why do we do these things to you? Are we evil? Are we demons?”

  “Like he’s gonna answer!”

  “No.”

  Jerry didn’t need to see Marshall to know how shocked he looked at the sound of the bag’s voice. He knew he looked the same, his jaw slack and eyes wide with awe. Its voice was soft and clear, a note from crystal filling Jerry’s head like a child’s first melody.

  “What?” He couldn’t tell if he’d said it or thought it, but he figured it might not matter either way.

  “You’re not evil,” the angel said. “And you’re not a demon. You’re something so much worse.”

  Jerry waited, afraid of the answer.

  The angel sighed. Its eye closed, opened. “You’re just human.”

  The words struck like a wrecking ball, slamming into Jerry’s gut. He slumped forward, breathing through bared teeth and trying like hell not to cry. He’d never felt so hopeless or pathetic. He’d burned through his anger, and now his despair tore at him. What could he do? How could he possibly hope to fight the thing he’d become?

  And then he knew. He nodded, a sigh escaping his lips. Maybe the angel was right. Maybe being human was worse than being evil. That didn’t make him a monster.

  Jerry stood. His muscles and joints ached with each movement. He felt spent, used up like the angel that served as their punching bag. He sensed the bag’s eye on him, and he nodded. “Thanks.”

  He stepped to the barn’s door. “Marshall, let me out. I want to go home, sleep this shit off.”

  His friend moved without speaking, fumbling with the key and ramming it into the padlock. A moment later, Jerry slid open the barn door and stepped into the night. He didn’t look back, didn’t say another word. He simply climbed behind the wheel of his truck and started the engine.

  He’d go home. He’d curl up in his bed for the first night in almost a year and sleep off his drunk, and when morning came he’d call Nancy’s sister in Frankfort, make sure his wife had arrived all right. He wouldn’t ask to talk to her or say he was coming to get her. He’d say he was sorry, and he’d mean it. Maybe she’d come back, maybe not. She deserved to make that decision on her own, and he’d give her all the time she needed. Maybe someday she’d forgive him, maybe after he’d forgiven himself.

  Something streaked through the dark, early morning sky, burning its way toward the horizon. It looked like a shooting star, but Jerry wondered. He thought maybe it was something different, and he thought maybe somewhere else there was a dying county that needed something to believe in.

  THREE, TWO, ONE

  JANUARY 1ST, LAST YEAR, 1:14 AM

  Just made it home and got the door shut and barricaded. Whole lot of close calls on the way back, but I had my eyes open. Amazing how easy things can be when you’re one of the few who knows what’s going on.

  Pretty loud out there right now, but I think it’s going to get a whole lot louder. Way it sounds this second, it could still be people partying. Well, maybe half. There’s plenty of screams. It’s a weird smash of noise, all of it just pushing together into this strange bunch of chaos. Makes me wonder how it’s all going to go, if it really will get louder or if this is the worst of it. Maybe it’ll start to ease off soon. What if Manhattan’s a ghost town by noon? I don’t think it could happen that fast, but what do I know? We didn’t exactly get a chance to rehearse this. It’s the night, yeah?

  Exciting days.

  Walking through Times Square before midnight…Well, it erased any doubts I had, right? It was like a zoo. Even smelled like one. All those people crammed up against each other. They’re slapping hands and laughing, kissing. I walked past one couple kissing in the middle of the throng. He had his hand down the front of her pants, and his entire arm was working. The woman moaned into his mouth as she worked her hips against his hand. I looked around to see if anybody else had noticed this disgusting scene, and the only other man who had was laughing, cheering them on while he snapped a picture. Probably wanted to join in the fun.

  So I moved through the crowd, acting like I was enjoying myself when I really just wanted to throw up. Part of it was disgust, yeah, but a lot of it was excitement. Everything had built to that moment, the new year—The Last Year—only a minute or so away. I even put on one of those pairs of cheap, ridiculous party glasses, the kind with the plastic bent into the shapes of stars. They hid my eyes, which was good, and they took attention away from the surgical mask I was wearing. I’d drawn a smiley face on it, so the few people that did seem to notice only pointed and laughed. Whenever they did that, I gave them a nod and shot them a thumbs up. They never even noticed the test tube in my other hand or The Complex falling out of it and sifting away on the soft breeze.

  I dumped my last dose as the crowd started counting down from ten. The ball was dropping, and everybody was hopping up and down so that the crowd was throbbing around me. I got excited. Trailing the tube behind me, I smiled behind my mask, and I wanted to laugh. If I hadn’t been so scared of ruining my mask, I would have.

  The crowd was chanting, “Three, Two,” as I shook out the last of the powder. I tossed away the tube as the crowd screamed, “One!” Then, I pushed my way out of there as the crowd burst into that New Year’s song that everybody sings. Maybe it would have been fun to stick around and watch things happen, but I agreed to document. That means I had to hurry my behind out of there and get home.

  On my way back to the apartment, I heard more than saw the change starting. There was one woman tearing at her face with a broken bottle. She just stood there at the mouth of an alley, bent at the waist and crouching a bit on her knees as she worked and worked. Not once did I hear her cry out. It wasn’t until I made it another block that I heard the first screams, a man who could still form enough words to tell people to get off him. By the time I got within two blocks of home, the screams were springing up from every direction, some of them hard to distinguish from party noise and some impossible to mistake.

  As I walked up the apartment steps, I heard a man grunting, a sound like stone colliding with stone ringing with each utterance. I don’t know what he was doing,
but I think I can imagine. Maybe I should have gone and checked. I am supposed to be documenting, after all. Thing is, I don’t think I was ready to handle it. Dropping The Complex still had me all jittery.

  Yeah. So, there’s the big reveal. Here I am, one of the few who was chosen to stay behind and document for future generations (if there are any), and I was too scared to do it. Why lie about it? I was scared. Not the best start, but I think I can do better.

  I need some water. Back in a bit.

  JANUARY 1ST, LAST YEAR, 2:04 AM

  News reports are really coming in now. Not surprising, considering there were already camera crews in the city. What gets me is that reports are already coming in from pretty much everywhere. Just watched a story on riots in a small Indiana town right across the state border from Cincinnati. I wonder if somebody got infected in the city and then went home and spread it, or of it’s some kind of sympathetic riot. That would be an interesting twist, all right, and I don’t think it’s one anybody saw coming. I’ll have to keep an eye on this…

  JANUARY 1ST, 4:37 AM

  If there were doubts before, they’re gone now. The news is showing coverage all the time now, calling it the New Year’s Riots. Ridiculous (I’m not supposed to editorialize, but I’m human). What I can hear from my place on the fifth floor is louder than any riot I’ve ever imagined. Screams and pounding and gunfire, roaring engines and the crackling of fires.

  Hmm. I wonder if it will be the fire that gets me. That would be terrible. Not the dying part. That’s something I’ve been ready for this entire time. The record, though. Right now, I’m putting everything on the hard drive and printing copies up for binding. If and when the power goes out (because some things were kind of up in the air, as far as I can tell), I’ll need to switch over to pen and paper. What good’s the record if a fire sweeps through and destroys it, though? What’s more important, remaining passive or protecting the record?

  If I knew who any of the other recorders were, I’d call and ask them. How stupid is that? At the end of the day, it’s just idiotic. Here I am, almost four hours into mankind’s last year on this planet, and I’m worrying about making phone calls. I promise you the switchboards are jammed up from here to San Diego.

  Speaking of which, the West Coast should have started their last year by now. No coverage of it yet, but they’ve only had a little more than ninety minutes to really—

  Something just exploded! It was about half a block away. I checked out the window (part of my preparations involved boarding up the windows, but I left viewing ports like any good witness) and saw this van burning, just a big ball of flame. That was something I expected. The two people nearby weren’t.

  One of them was on fire, but he either didn’t know or didn’t care. I think it was a woman, but it was hard to tell from a distance. She kept throwing fists at the other one, who appeared to be a man who was scared out of his mind. He kept trying to turn away, and she just kept hitting him. When he finally did get his back to her, she jumped on it, and then they were both on fire. She rode him to the ground and looked to be slamming his head against the street. I watched her do that for almost a minute, the man bucking beneath her, and then they both just collapsed to the pavement and lay there, burning.

  Fascinating.

  JANUARY 1ST, 10:14 AM

  Can’t believe I managed to squeeze in a little sleep. I guess the fact that there’s not a lot of light coming in the windows makes it easier. When I woke up, there wasn’t a lot of screaming going on, but there was quite a bit of gunfire. I peeked out a few of my ports, and I saw a single military Humvee cruising the street below. There was blood smeared along the sides, and one of the doors was missing. I couldn’t get a good enough look to see if there was actual military sitting inside or somebody who’d jacked it, though. I wonder which is the case.

  There’s a lot of smoke in the city this morning. A gray haze kind of hangs around everything. Through the cameras I placed on the roof, I can see at least seven columns of thick, black smoke rising out of the city. There’s at least one fire burning about five blocks west of here. I’ll have to go up to the roof later and see if I can get a better look at the rest of the area. Probably some interesting things to see. Maybe after I grab a bite. I’ll have to be careful. Never know how much of the building might be infected.

  JANUARY 1ST, 11:56 AM

  Somebody just jumped from a window above me. Don’t know which floor, and I didn’t even hear them fall. Just the impact on the pavement. By the time I could get to the ports and look, two others had come out of the woodwork and were stomping on what was left of the body. They’re gone now, and the body is just a red smear on the pavement. When the two (they have to be infected) ran off, their pants were soaked up to the knee, covered in filth and blood. They’d probably spent close to five minutes just stomping on that corpse. I know I should have timed it for history’s sake, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. That could happen to me. Most likely, it will. Surgical masks aren’t going to stop it forever, right?

  Well, that’s a sobering thought. Do I have any booze left?

  JANUARY 1ST, 4:17 PM

  Here we are, three minutes until four-twenty, and I don’t have even a single bud. How’s that for failing to plan ahead?

  The news networks are still going strong. I guess they warranted some kind of guard or something. Local stations are a bit spotty, though. While the CBS affiliate is still going strong, Fox and NBC are out. ABC has gone guerilla. There’s no anchor behind a desk. Instead, there are about half a dozen terrified people huddled in some kind of control room. A woman I don’t recognize, not pretty enough to be on-air talent, keeps reading updates from an iPhone. Her hands are shaking, and her face is dirty enough that I can see the tracks her tears have cut down her cheeks.

  Every few seconds, something bangs nice and loud. I’m guessing it’s somebody trying to get into their room, because everybody jumps whenever it happens. Even the camera does a little up and down.

  A part of me wants to laugh. It was people like this who got us into this mess, all the bullshit media putting out more noise than signal, never telling us how things really are. That’s one of the reasons we decided to make this The Last Year. Everybody needed to know things had turned awful. They needed their eyes opened.

  The camera has turned to stare at a bald man wearing glasses. He looks old, maybe in his sixties. He’s shaking like he’s cold, and when he talks the first thing he says is, “I’m sorry. I can’t do it anymore.” Then, he starts sobbing. It’s those big, body-racking sobs you had when you were a kid. He spends a few seconds trying to say something else, but the first syllable keeps getting stuck in his throat. The woman who was reading the report tries to pat his shoulder, but he shoves her away, shouting. There are more shouts, a bunch of those bangs, and the camera starts moving around like its operator is panicking or searching for something. Images whip past the camera so fast I have to close my eyes to keep from getting sick (great observer, I know), and then there’s a scream and the camera whips back to the crying man.

  He’s not crying anymore, or if he is he’s past the point of caring. A metal ballpoint pen juts from his throat, and he’s pushing it in deeper. Blood gouts from around the object, staining the others in the room. The woman’s screaming like some kind of hysterical basket case, now. Some of the others try to subdue the bleeding man, but he pushes them back. The camera backs against the wall. Trying to find a clear shot, I guess. It stays put until the man finally slumps to the floor and dies. Then, everybody else stands around crying for a while, while the banging gets quieter and then finally goes away.

  I watch every second even though I know it’s all disgusting. If the world wasn’t ending, these people would probably have their own reality show by Friday. Lock them in a room, leave them a pen, and see who makes it out alive.

  We did the right thing. I’m sure of it.

  Hmm…CBS is gone now. That didn’t take long at all.

  JANUARY 2N
D, 12:32 AM

  There’s somebody in the hallway. It’s quiet now, but I know somebody was out there at least a minute ago. They were banging on the door, trying to get in. Lot of racket. Enough to wake me up, and I even took a sleeping pill beforehand.

  A part of me wants to think it’s just somebody who’s either infected or running from infected slamming into random doors, trying to find a place to hide or a body to kill. I didn’t have any lights on, no radio or TV. Thing is, I haven’t heard a sound since I woke up. If it was random, they would have continued down the hall, right? Maybe I’m imagining things, or maybe the sound was out of a dream. No. That’s not right, either. This is…

  There it was again!

  Seriously, I am not making this up. Why the hell would I? Four loud, pounding hits against my apartment door. I looked through the peephole, but the hallway’s empty, at least in front of my door. Shit, this doesn’t make sense. It’s been a day. Less than! Way too early for cabin fever to be setting in.

  JANUARY 2ND, 1:07 AM

  Probably a dumb move, but I had to leave the apartment and check things out. I was supposed to go out sooner or later and see how The Last Year is progressing, so it wasn’t like I could stay shut in. Things are different when I know there’s somebody out there and nearby, though.