by Matt Brennan
“Are you kidding me? This water is way too crazy to get in that canoe!”
She frowns. “We’re not getting in the water. Come on, help me!”
I help her drag the canoe into the building and then down another set of stairs to a landing next to a really calm canal.
“Oh crap, we forgot the paddles! Go back up and get them, I’ll put this baby in the water.”
By the time I get back with the paddles she’s already launched the canoe, loaded my gear and the guns, and is sitting inside.
Lyssa rolls her eyes and shouts, “Look, don’t just stand there looking stupid, give me the paddles and get in!”
I hand her the paddles and jump in the front of the canoe (well, to be honest I carefully and awkwardly board). I kneel down just like Lyssa and she hits me on my shoulder with one of the paddles and yells for me to grab it. She pushes us away from the building and starts paddling like crazy, yelling, “Paddle, you moron!”
I’m paddling as fast as I can. It amazes me how quickly we move through the water. I guess, I always thought canoes were really slow. But once you get a good pace going with the paddles, it almost glides along the water.
We round a bend and enter into the part of the canal that has sheer walls, at least forty feet on both sides. Way down at the end of the canal I see a bridge. “Is that it?” I ask. “The bridge you were telling me about?”
“I wish, no we have a bunch more like that one before we’re safe. But we’ll hit the river there.”
I stop paddling and spin around. “Are you crazy? That river is way too wild!”
Lyssa smiles. “Don’t worry ya nancy, the river up there moves, yes, but not like back at the plant. It’s just a river. Once we get there, you’ll see what I mean. The good news is we won’t have to paddle as much, which I know you’ll like. You know, since you’re so out of shape and everything.”
Why does she always do that? It’s not like I’m a complete loser. I mean, I carried a sixty-pound backpack twenty miles! Well, it was probably closer to ten miles, okay, maybe eight... but still!
“Look, I would really appreciate it if you stopped giving me crap.”
Lyssa laughs. “I would, if you’d just stop being so pathetic.”
I splash her with my paddle. I thought we’d get into a nice little war of splashing each other, at least that was my intent. But apparently Lyssa had never seen those romantic comedies where couples would play around, splashing each other with water while the soft music played.
No, she just hit me in the back of my head with her paddle. Hard.
Everything turns black. Just as I’m sliding into the abyss of unconsciousness, it reminds me of The Darkness, and how it felt to die.
CHAPTER THREE
The blackness engulfs me like a blanket. There’s no sound, no thought, and no pain. Just nothingness and cold.
An image of my mother pops into my brain from the ether.
It strikes me as odd, because I kind of hate my mother, but there she is. Young and beautiful. She is smiling at me and gently raking her fingers through my hair. I’m lying with my head in her lap and she’s looking down at me. And I feel safe. Safer than I have felt in a very long time. Not since I was four or five and I felt like my mother could protect me from anything. She is so beautiful I almost forget that I hate her.
Suddenly my brain is flooded with images of her doing things like wiping my face/hands free of chocolate cake and frosting. And other images of her smiling at me because I’d just drawn a picture and was showing it to her. I had forgotten how beautiful her smile was. It emanated from every cell in her body. And her laugh! Oh god, did she have a great laugh. It sort of took hold her whole body and she would do this bouncing, shaking thing till she finally had to collapse at the waist in a desperate attempt to get oxygenated blood up to her brain. But the best part about making her laugh was that she would always pull me into a hug and kiss me on top of my head, then lean my head back and tell me she never loved anyone or anything as much as she loved me.
I almost forgot about that.
It’s funny what you forget about when someone abandons you to absolute solitude and loneliness for the rest of your life. Because no matter how you look at it, that’s what her suicide did. She left me on this miserable rock and doomed me to a life where the nearest human being was 3,000 miles away. Actually, to be completely honest, the biospheres weren’t that bad. Mine used to feel more like a security blanket than it did anything else. It gave me three square meals a day and I didn’t even have to smell my own farts for more than just a few seconds. Dad and I used to call the biosphere a womb away from home.
He was a genius, did I mention that? (My head is kind of fuzzy so I hope I’m not rambling or repeating myself.)
This isn’t your typical “kid idolizing his father” kind of genius. My dad was legit. He graduated from MIT with a dual Masters in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering when he was only seventeen years old. Then, instead of getting rich in the high-tech world of the 21st century, he went back to college to become a doctor.
You know, so he could really make the rest of the planet feel like chimps.
He told me once that the medical degree was much harder for him and so it took a bit longer. Well, longer for him. He started his residency when he was twenty-one. Yeah, you heard me right, twenty-one.
Did you do the math yet?
Genius.
You know, time is crazy. I have zero idea how long I’ve been knocked out. Could be ten minutes, could be ten hours. But it’s weird, even when I’m out cold my mind still occupies itself by thinking about my parents.
They met during his residency at the Vancouver General Hospital. My mom was a virologist and was a bit paranoid about her work. She began to see the steady increase of drug resistant strains of lethal bugs and got a little bit panicky. She convinced my father to build the biospheres as a safety net. Originally, the idea was to seal themselves up inside, as a worst case scenario solution kind of thing. That way they could live out the remainder of their years safely tucked away from harm. Though that was long before we ever heard of The Darkness or The Melding. It just never occurred to them that surviving the plague meant that they would end up being completely shut off from everything and everyone they ever loved—including each other. My mother used to tell me it felt like she was living in a snow globe.
I lost my dad first.
Did I already tell you that? I’m sorry, I just I can’t seem to concentrate while I’m unconscious. I guess that’s normal, I don’t know.
But what I meant was, I lost him before my mom. It was inevitable I guess; I mean we all die, but for him it was destined to be sooner rather than later. You see, he insisted on being the only one who went outside to make repairs. He caught his biosuit on the metal door latch to the airlock. He lasted three whole days. Back in those days, the strain was still in its infancy, evolutionarily speaking that is. Now, it’s evolved to the point where it is lethal in just six hours. The UNN (United Nations Network) claims in its online news bulletins that according to its data the strain is becoming more deadly by the day. It’s too bad Dad couldn’t have waited till when Mom got sick.
She was gone in just twelve hours.
She claimed there was a malfunction in her biosphere’s filtration system, but I checked the logs. There was no malfunction. She opened the air divertors manually. I guess she just couldn’t handle the isolation, at least not after we lost Dad. Some days I feel sorry for her. Others I wish she was still here so I could kill her myself.
It was tough watching her go though. I felt so powerless. If I’d had a gun or something, maybe I could have ended her suffering. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have done anything. She was my mom and all. But Tylenol was the strongest thing we had for God's sake and she was in so much pain. It wouldn’t have mattered though, because when the end came I couldn’t risk getting close enough to do anything. I had to seal them both up in their biospheres. Mom was just too broken up to do it for Dad.
>
They’re still in them right now. Their refuge became their tomb.
I feel a wave of nausea hit me. My eyes flutter open but the light is too strong and hurts my brain, so I close them again and slip back into the blessed darkness of sleep.
My mind drifts back to the day I died.
I remember I woke plastered to my sheets and jumped out of bed swinging, like I always do. I’ve had that same dream for as long as I can remember. The location changes and so do some of the characters, but it always ends with that little girl biting me. It’s all so vivid, I can even smell that little girl’s strawberry scented shampoo. Well, that’s a little carry over from my mother I guess, she had this strawberry scented shampoo and conditioner. I always liked that smell.
Anyway, that morning I woke to find I had lost my signal to the Nexus. That’s the game zone the survivors of the plague had created. It was this huge multi-user online universe and it took the place of our daily human interactions. Some of us Skyped and stuff, but we all just mostly met up on the Nexus. But that day I had no signal. After checking the external cameras I saw what looked to be a tree branch lying on top of the dish. Which was by far the worst news I could possibly have gotten—nobody died till they went outside.
By the time I had finally got outside, most of that day had gone and I only had a few hours of daylight left. But even in the evening light, I could see that the branch was actually an entire tree. I had no tools to deal with a tree. No saws or anything. I knew I’d have to go back and climb all the way up to the storage closet to see if I had anything that could help me. And I knew at that stage it meant I wouldn’t get it fixed that day.
Then I’d remembered Ellie.
I knew I had to let Ellie know I was fine or she’d freak out. I was pissed. It was a nightmare. So like an idiot, I started breaking branches with my wrench, the only tool I had. The branches came off easy enough, but it had taken too long and I was getting real mad at this stage. So I ended up just forcing my way under the tree, loosening the bolts holding my dish in place, and yanking it free from the trees vice-like grip. Then I mounted it against a shed nearby.
Walking back to the biosphere, I remember I was still so mad I couldn’t see straight. I kept throwing my wrench and running up to it and either picking it up and throwing it again or kicking it.
Anyway, when I finally got back to the airlock, I slammed the door release back into the locked position so hard that I almost broke it off. Which would have been tragic since I didn’t have a replacement for it. The disinfectant shower had activated automatically once the lock engaged, just like it was programmed to do. But instead of the cool waters drumming against my biosuit, calming my nerves, I feel wetness. It starts on my shoulder blade and then begins to spread out down my back.
There was only one reason I knew that could explain that sensation—my suit was torn. I was going to die.
CHAPTER FOUR
I remember the steady stream of water splashing all over me, the wetness spreading out all over my back and running down my legs. Even after years of reading Stephen King novels and watching horror movies, it took that sensation for me to finally understand what true terror felt like. My father always told me, I’d have to wait until something I truly loved was threatened for me to really get it. Funny, I never in a million years thought it would be my own life.
I remember thinking, clear as day: “This is it. I’m dead. I just killed myself.”
I ripped off the helmet, suit, and the rest of my clothes as fast as I could. The disinfectant liquid stung my eyes and my sinuses instantly felt like they burst into flames, but I didn’t have a choice. The suit’s integrity had been compromised—I needed to be cleansed.
That’s when I noticed the burning sensation coming from my shoulder blade. The same area where I first felt the wetness.
I had no way to check myself in the airlock, but I knew that pain couldn’t be good.
I remember I grabbed the suit and clothes and helmet and dumped them in the incinerator. It was more of a bittersweet moment than I expected it to be. I know it all had to burn, but part of me had hoped I could hang on to that suit. After all, it was one of the few things my parents ever touched that I still had left.
I hit the extended clean button, which meant I’d get disinfected again and then rinsed thoroughly with water. The fluid was cold as ice, but I had to let it run over every part of me. When the water mercifully stopped flowing, I hit the airlock release button and dashed out the door. I remember racing over to a mirror that was built into one of the locker doors, and for the first time seeing the injury on my shoulder. A three-inch long gash started at the top of my shoulder blade and sliced down to just below the bone. I’ll never forget the way the blood was gushing out. So not only had the integrity of my suit been compromised, but my skin as well.
I threw on a pair of my emergency surgical greens that I kept in the lockers and my shoes and raced down the ladder. When I got to the bottom I stumbled into my room, grabbing a bottle of iodine to pour over my shoulder. I remember I was wholly unprepared for the pain. It felt like I just poured molten metal or sulfuric acid all over my back. I’m not sure how loud I screamed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my parents had heard me in the afterlife.
Once the burning subsided, I wrapped up the wound with an ace bandage and put a surgical scrub back on. I tried to convince myself that everything was going to be fine. That it was just a scratch and nothing to worry about.
But I didn’t believe it.
I went into my bathroom and popped the last of the penicillin I had. For all I knew, it could have been the last bottle on the planet, because no one else I knew could get the recipe right. My mom, being the genius that she was, had taught me well. Not that penicillin would do a thing against The Darkness. But it would have killed any bacteria in the wound. If I were lucky, it would kill them before they had the chance to spread. There’s no guarantee the bacteria wriggling in the wound had the bacteriophage, but I was taking no chances. Plus, I’d always been slightly allergic to the stuff, so I knew once I took it I’d be out like a light.
And it worked, because my head barely hit the pillow before I was asleep.
***
It’s weird how you remember the worst days of your life for ever and yet lose all the little details. Maybe it’s a survival instinct to dump the really difficult moments, or maybe our brains just don’t have the ability to store that much data—I don’t know. But all I really remember about the day I tore my suit was that it was a Tuesday. All the details of what happened after I got infected are so fuzzy I barely remember anything. For example, I have no idea how long I was unconscious—I mean it could’ve been a couple of minutes or several days. All I know is that when I did open my eyes I was completely plastered to the sheets and, oh yeah, my mouth was dry.
No, not just dry, but totally devoid of all moisture.
I remember that the crazy thing was, even in that cloudy state of mind, I still recognized that symptom for what it was. I’d seen it a thousand times. First came the fever and then came the thirst. Thirst so intense that I’d drink till my need was sated, which was the tragedy of it all. Because the need could never possibly be satisfied. I’d just keep drinking till I either drowned or started convulsing.
Then—I’d be dead.
There’s a certain level of calmness that takes over when you face your own mortality. My whole life I fought every day to stay alive, but when I was faced with the knowledge that my time was short, the end certain, I wasn’t scared or desperate. I was almost relieved. Life had always been so hard, so the idea that I’d finally get to rest was actually comforting.
But even through the haze of sickness I knew I couldn’t just roll over and die. There was no way I was going into The Darkness like a wuss, I had to connect the uplink and talk to Ellie. I just couldn’t let the question burn in her mind forever about what happened to me.
I owed her that. I owe everyone that.
But
in order to do that I had to warm up the server and I couldn’t do that from my bed. I remember I even toyed with the idea of stopping by the bathroom for a drink of water from the tap on my way. But luckily I snapped out of it. I couldn’t let myself drink. It just sped everything up, that was the last thing my mother learned before my father died.
Water equals death.
Of course, no water equaled death too, but I never would have had time to get the uplink connection ready if The Darkness progressed too quickly.
I just needed a little more time, a precious commodity.
Somehow I rolled out of bed. I don’t know how, all I know is I found myself on the floor and in pain. My bed was really far off the ground and I remember telling myself that in my next life I had to remember to make my bed lower. I dragged myself along the floor and every inch was like a dagger jabbing into my brain. At first, all I felt was the pain, but with each wiggle, the dizziness and nausea hit me like a hammer.
I was too late. I knew by that stage that The Darkness had me.
My last thought before I drifted into the abyss was of Ellie. How she’d never know for sure what happened to me. There were hundreds reasons to lose contact, after all. She might waste years hoping I was still alive, never letting herself consider the truth. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
I was just dead.
* * *
But I hadn’t died just then. Instead, I’d woken up on the floor to the sound of my alarm clock ringing in my ears.
My head was on fire. I grabbed the cord to my clock and ripped it out of the wall. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure where I was. The confusion must have started, another symptom of the fever.
I didn’t have much time.
I crawled towards my server and hit the emergency power button. I dragged the keyboard off my desk to the floor by the cord. When I heard the distinctive ping of my cursor appearing on the monitor above me, I typed my macro and hit enter. I knew I only had a few minutes to complete the uplink and get through to Ellie, but I didn’t have the strength to panic. I just lay my head on the cool floor and closed my eyes.