by Jack Hunt
We navigated around the stream of people of all ages coming in and out of the main door.
“How many people did he invite?” Wren asked as a couple ran past us with six others.
Whoever originally owned the home must have hired one hell of a designer. The amount of detail and attention that had been given to every aspect of the house screamed more money than sense.
After being on the road for so long, seeing people relax and let their hair down was a welcome sight. The living room was located on the second floor providing an incredible view of the ocean and bay. Not that we could see much because it was night but the few times I had been over in daylight, it was stunning.
Standing in front of a roaring fireplace was Elijah chatting to Sara, a doctor on the island.
“Hey, where’s Baja?”
He pointed up towards the roof terrace. Upstairs on the roof it was like a ship with rich wood flooring, another fireplace and white furniture. Seated over by the fireplace with two women around him was Baja sipping wine. He reminded me of a black Hugh Hefner wearing a velvet smoking jacket. He was puffing away on a fat cigar when he spotted us.
“Hey, hey! Welcome to my crib,” he said before waving off the two women like they were his own personal fluffers.
“I’m guessing Izzy hasn’t arrived?” Wren asked.
He peered around us nervously. “Yeah, old sweet cheeks doesn’t take too kindly to all the love I’m getting from all the ladies, but what can a guy do? I’ve got to keep them happy.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Did you guys get a drink?”
“No, but we brought some.”
“Well, give me one then,” he said. It was the only party I had been to where you had to drink your own because no one shared. If you didn’t bring any, you didn’t get any. I was about to ask him if he’d seen Ben when he turned and started shouting at a couple who were all over each other on the couch.
“Hey, hey, get your nasty asses off my couch, I don’t want you leaking your shit all over this. Do you know how much this place cost?”
We moved to the wall that overlooked the beach and ocean. Wren pulled two beers and twisted off the caps, then handed one to me. I took a swig and placed it on the wall. Condensation dripped down the side creating a ring. We perched ourselves on the edge and took in our surroundings. It was good to see people enjoying themselves and trying to forget that the world beyond the walls had fallen.
“Do you think this will last?”
“I don’t see why not.” She glanced at me.
“Ah, call me a pessimist but it seems that everything good that has ever come our way has eventually turned to shit.”
She nudged me with her elbow. “Not everything.” She leaned over and pressed her lips against mine. As I pulled her in close, over her shoulder I saw Rowan and Jess come up. She caught sight of us. The smile on her face vanished. Wren must have sensed a change as she twisted in my arms, casting a glance over her shoulder.
An hour into the party, with people filled up with liquid courage, a fight broke out downstairs. Baja went off to sort it out, while Elijah and I sat on the couch, Wren was off to my right and Rowan, Jess and Izzy across from us. Elijah puffed away on a large cigar with his feet up on the table. One thing that had changed was the conversation.
Before, it would have been about finding food or gas or pursuing some asshole. But twelve months had changed that, people were back to trying to find excitement in their life, comparing and making out that their life didn’t suck as bad as anyone else’s. Basically Facebook but without the Internet.
“So how are things down in Montauk?” Elijah asked behind a cloud of smoke. Izzy coughed and swiped the air so she could see him.
I could see Izzy searching for the words. Each of the seven districts had around five hundred people, they each acted as their own small village. She ummed. It’s not like anyone could say, “Hey, I’m off to the Bahamas next month” or “I just landed my dream job in Hollywood.” It was more like “I learned how to fish” or “I finally can shoot the top off a bottle” or “We have created a new garden.”
“Oh, lots going on down there. You really should join us.”
I rolled my eyes. And there it was. Now people were trying to make out that their neck of the woods was better than the one we were in. It was the same old shit, repackaged and served up on a platter.
“What about you, Johnny?” Jess asked. “What’s new in your world?”
I could see the look in her eye. Like a kid prodding a hornet’s nest for fun. She was looking to get a reaction. She didn’t care what was going on in my world. She made that clear the day she shut me out of hers.
“To be honest, I’m thinking of moving.”
Wren slapped my leg playfully. “You never told me that.”
“Yeah, I think it’s time.”
“Which district are you going to?” Rowan asked.
I eyed him over the top of my drink. “Actually none. I’m thinking of moving to the Fortress. Where Specs is.”
Elijah began coughing on his cigar so much that Izzy passed him a drink and he washed it down. His eyes were red as the smoke stung them.
“Are you out of your mind?” he said turning around.
“Not any more than us staying here.”
“But here there’s better protection. Better living. There’s enough people to carry the load of what needs to be done. Heck, I haven’t been out on the wall in over a month, it’s been beautiful.”
Each of them looked at me as if I had lost the plot.
“Why doesn’t Specs come here?” Elijah continued.
“He’s made a life for himself where he is. It’s going well.”
Jess gave a fake laugh. “Yeah, right. How well can you live in the middle of nowhere?”
“Well you should know, moving all the way to the tip of the island. Oh, but that’s right, you just want some alone time,” I said.
She glared at me.
“What if you get back there and discover he’s not there?” Izzy asked.
“I know he’s there. I’ve been talking to him using the ham radio over in North Haven.”
“And you didn’t think to tell us?” Jess asked.
Rowan shot Wren a questioning look. As they were siblings I kind of figured he would assume she might want to come with me. But I hadn’t told her. In fact, I hadn’t told anyone.
“Why do you want to leave?” Jess asked.
“I made a promise.”
“You made me one, look how that turned out,” she replied in front of them all. I had to admit I didn’t expect that, and by the look on Rowan’s face, neither did he. The only difference was, I no longer cared. At least, I didn’t think I did.
I swallowed the last of my beer and placed the bottle on the table.
“It’s different.”
“Is it?” she shot back.
I shook my head and went to get up. “I’m not getting into this with you.”
“No that’s it, Johnny, just walk away. You’re good at that.”
I stopped for a second to let her words sink in.
“Jess,” Izzy stammered in a reprimanding manner.
“Oh who cares.” She got up and brushed past me making it clear that she was pissed.
The interesting part about it all was Wren’s reaction. Hers was the complete opposite of Jess’s. She just smiled, even let out a little chuckle. Really, the two of them were like oil and water.
Baja came back up just in time to be pushed out of the way by Jess. His eyes drifted over us. “Oh come on, what did I miss?”
That evening back at the house, I noticed how unaffected Wren was by the news. When she did stay over, she would go through the same routine, except this evening she seemed uninterested. Without TV, Internet or such to keep a person occupied, life was pretty much quiet. Having conversations and reading books, playing card games and getting out near the beach was how most residents of Paradise occupied themselves in t
heir downtime. It wasn’t like her. At least from what I’d seen so far.
“You want to go take a dip in the ocean?” she asked.
I looked at her as she removed her clothes, slid open the door and raced down to the beach completely butt naked. How could I object to that? I returned a devilish smile and dropped down to my birthday suit. Outside the air was humid and warm. The ocean lapped against the shore leaving behind its milky froth.
She didn’t even hesitate, or check the water with her toes. She dived in and came up gasping.
“Shit, that’s little chilly.”
I joined her by wading in. I winced. “Chilly? Holy crap, that is nut shrinking cold.”
She chuckled before swimming on her back. A silver crescent moon reflected off the dark water. I was always paranoid about sharks. After seeing the movie Jaws as a kid, I fully expected one to rear its head and take me down. I pushed the fearful thought from my mind, telling myself these waters were too cold.
The further we went out, the more we could see of the island. Small generators that used gas or diesel powered some of the homes. Others didn’t bother, while some used fire to light up the outside. People made do with whatever they could find.
According to Specs they were doing fine, but how long their supplies would last was another thing entirely. It certainly made sense to have him trek across the country and join us, but the likelihood of that happening was slim.
It wasn’t that I was eager to leave behind the comfort and protection of a safe zone but I was feeling restless. Perhaps if Dax had been here, I might have thought differently. But he wasn’t. Now, those that remained were trying to carve out an existence on an island, pretending our world hadn’t gone to shit. But realistically, how long could we make it work?
How long before someone would screw it up?
But it wasn’t even that. Maybe I wasn’t ready to put my roots down?
I was beginning to think that the agreement to live in separate towns and give each other a break from one another wasn’t done because we got on each other’s nerves. I had to wonder if it was because we were all trying to determine if Paradise was really home. The only way you could do that was to try and live out a normal existence, as normal as it could be for a society that had suffered a setback that had thrown us into the dark ages. Okay, maybe that’s a little extreme but it wasn’t that far off.
Sure we had the city nearby, all the factories and houses that were still full of resources but those would eventually run out. Whether it was in five or ten years, what then?
It seemed as if we were just biding our time, waiting for the inevitable — death.
But wasn’t society like that before the apocalypse?
Humanity divided into countries, cities, towns and villages. People busied themselves with meaningful and meaningless activities. Dashing here and there, taking selfies, raising families, sending more kids into a never-ending cycle of hope and despair?
Was that all there was to life?
It felt wrong.
It didn’t matter if we lived out our lives behind these walls with more creature comforts than those beyond. It didn’t matter if we thought we were the smart ones while others carved out a meager existence in some shack in the woods.
What mattered was making our lives matter.
Doing something that brought us alive.
And one thing I was sure about. It wasn’t this. It wasn’t waiting to die behind these walls. My body held the cure and others needed it. If we only ventured out to collect food and resources, how was that benefiting others? How many others were floundering around in some town, city or village waiting for someone to help them? How many others were living life under the thumb of a tyrant or in fear of the undead and living insane?
“You haven’t said much about this evening.”
“Nothing to say really,” she replied treading water. I studied the way the light of the moon created shadows against her features.
“Why do you do that?”
She frowned. “Do what?”
“Just cast things off as though they don’t matter to you?”
She laughed and splashed some water over me.
“Come on, let’s swim out further.”
“No. Tell me what you are thinking.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does,” I replied.
“What? Just because Jess kicked up a fuss, you think I should too?”
“No, I don’t—”
“Then that’s the end of that,” she replied.
We continued swimming out a bit further when a sudden, and enormous explosion erupted. Both of us whirled around to see a cloud of smoke and an inferno of flames shooting up into the night sky. It was followed by another, then fireballs fell like rain.
“That’s coming from section A.”
CHAPTER 4
IT WAS pandemonium in the streets. By the time we came out of the house with assault rifles in hand, trucks were zipping past us on their way to section A. We dived into a jeep and the wheels spun in the dirt as I gunned the engine.
An amber glow came from beyond the homes that lined the street.
What we came upon when we arrived was mass devastation. The main building that housed those who initially came in was gone. In its place, fire cut into the night sky. Bodies lay on the ground, some unmoving, others were still alive screaming in pain.
I grabbed a large blanket from the back of the jeep and threw it over a young girl whose face and half of her head had been burned down to the bone. A team of military were using small portable extinguishers to put out whatever they could.
The girl’s screams were deafening. The chances of her surviving were slim to none. Three doctors in the entire place and only one was on site. Others had been trained but even then they weren’t prepared for this kind of trauma. They were all overwhelmed.
I couldn’t stay with the girl long before moving on to the next. There were too many covered in fire. Both Wren and myself along with others were doing as much as we could to put out the flames on the injured.
After ten minutes my gaze drifted across the gruesome sight. It had been twelve months since any of us had seen this level of trouble. I felt mentally out of shape, unfocused and after all the drink we had consumed, barely able to function. Like a fish flopping around on a dock, I was out of my element.
Staring. That’s all I could do. In that moment I froze.
“Johnny,” Wren shouted but it was barely heard among all the screams for help.
Young, old, all the faces of agony stared back. I placed my hands over my ears to block out the screams. I don’t know what broke inside of me that evening but I couldn’t bear to look at the horror any longer. I slowly backed up. Then turned and ran. All of the courage I had before fell away like skin melting off charred bones.
Like a salmon swimming upstream, I squeezed my way through those rushing to help. All I wanted was to block out the horror.
Minutes turned into hours, and noise became peace as I sat on the sandy beach looking out across the ocean. Small waves lapped against the shore. I had been there all night, undisturbed until morning. If asked, I wouldn’t be able to articulate what happened. In the past I’d seen the undead and charged into them, I’d stood my ground under the worst conditions. How was this any different?
Why did I turn away?
I picked at the sandy beach grass beside me as it swayed in the wind. Lost in thought I didn’t hear who was coming from behind. I tilted my head to see who it was. Ben stood looking out over the ocean for a few seconds before he took a seat.
Minutes passed before I spoke.
“I just couldn’t handle it,” I said, swallowing hard.
“Now you understand what happened to me in Salt Lake City.”
I shot him a sideways glance.
“Seems strange, doesn’t it, that one traumatic event can flip a switch inside that we thought didn’t exist before. I was used to seeing all manne
r of horrors on the job. Children abused by parents, animals killed, gang members’ limbs chopped off and women raped. I always had a strong stomach, my buddies would say. But seeing the undead tear into people. There was something about that which paralyzed me.”
“But this wasn’t the undead.”
“It doesn’t matter, Johnny. It was helplessness. At least that’s what I’ve come to call it. When I saw my men being torn apart I didn’t know what to do. It was like I was experiencing mental overload. So much happening all at once, my senses just shut down. I froze. Like you did last night.”
“I tried to help, but there were too many. And the screams.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?”
“I ran.”
“Back in the city, I locked myself in a room,” Ben said.
“It makes me a coward.”
He chuckled. “No, Johnny. It makes you human.” He tossed some of the sand in front of us. “What would worry me is if you weren’t affected by any of it.”
“But none of them were.”
“What, because they didn’t run?” He picked up a reed. “We all respond differently. It doesn’t take much. Way back when I was in high school I remember sitting in a science class and being shown a video on cuts. The teacher at the time said if anyone felt queasy, just to head out. I laughed it off. Hell, I’d seen some messed-up stuff. Broken ankles, bones sticking out and all manner of injuries from kids roughhousing. But that day. Well… let’s just say I never made it to the door on time.”
I smirked. “You fainted?”
He nodded. “And I became a cop. The good news is it hasn’t happened since. And man, I’ve seen some messed-up things over the years. So there’s hope for you.”
He patted me on the knee. “When you’re ready, come on back. I’m at Ethan’s house. We’ll have some coffee.”
I nodded. The thought of returning. The embarrassment. Did it even matter? There were innocent people dead and I was moping around like a bitch.
“Hey, Ben. What caused it?”
He shook his head. “They are still trying to figure that out.”