The Meek (Unbound Trilogy Book 1)

by J. D. Palmer

  I’m so tired.

  We stop by a large red apartment complex. The gates are locked but there is a lower level unit with a sliding glass door. I tap on the glass before trying the handle. Beryl watches me with wide eyes.

  “In case there are dogs.”

  She nods and we listen. I don’t hear anything. I try the handle. It’s open. I slowly slide it open and a foul stench rushes forth to greet us. I retch, bile rushing into my throat as I hastily stumble backwards.

  “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Best to get it over with. I wrap my shirt around my face and run inside. It’s hot and sticky inside. Flies buzz around the decomposing body of a man that sits on a large couch in front of a large TV. A pile of pizza boxes litter the coffee table and the floor. Posters of scantily clad women are on every wall, the only exception is a San Diego Chargers banner.

  I hustle to the kitchen area. The fridge is a disaster. Shit, probably was before the owner died. I find some boxed macaroni and cheese and some cans of soup in the cupboard. It’ll have to do.

  We take the food and walk farther down the street. I do not know where we are going, I do know that I won’t last much longer.

  The last building before you have to cross the wetlands is a small, fancy beach hotel. The Inn at Playa del Rey. Large pink flowers festoon the side of the building and old-fashioned lanterns adorn the entrance.

  The door swings open to reveal an empty lobby. Beryl walks behind the desk and rummages around, finally producing a handful of keys. We walk through a common room filled with a mix of small tables and long white sofas. There are striped ottomans and striped blankets and striped pillows and mirrors shaped like portholes reflecting the dying light. It’s too much. The room feels like it’s screaming.

  We go to the nearest room, a suite that stretches across most of the ground floor. Everything is white, and plush, and ocean themed. Pillows adorned with lighthouses and flocks of birds fly over a beach above the bed. The flatscreen TV adorns the wall over a dresser. A useless relic of the past that, for some reason, upsets me.

  Sliding doors open up onto a balcony that overlooks the wetlands. Clean sheets and clean towels and a bottle of champagne sits by the bed for two lovers who never made it to their destination.

  We lock the door, deadbolt it, and slide a chair in front. It feels gross, needing to imprison ourselves to feel safe. Are we doing it because we want to have a barrier against any lurking evil? Or do we do it because a prison is what we are used to?

  We sip cold soup from the can as we sit outside. Sea lions bark off in the distance in response to coyote howls. The ocean mimics thunder as the last light of the sun disappears. I’m exhausted but I cannot shut down my mind. Everything feels off. The room, the clothes, the sounds. The proximity of Beryl. The way that we can get up and walk around if we want to. And it bothers me. I don’t feel free. I feel lost. I feel vulnerable.

  The smell of the ocean is strong here. It’s too different. The sounds too loud. I go inside and Beryl is quick to follow me.

  I grab a couple mini bottles of assorted liquor from the mini bar and find a place to sit on the floor. I offer one to Beryl but she shakes her head.

  “I’m buying. You sure?”

  The joke fails to crack a smile. I sip on whiskey and we sit in silence for awhile. I try to ignore the brightness of the room. Even in the dark it is overwhelming.

  I realize we are sitting as we would back in that room above the garage. Me on the floor and Beryl on the bed. Not speaking, each of us fighting an internal desire to return to the routine pounded into us.

  “I have to get back to Montana.” She gives me a nod. I decide to keep talking. I know I don’t need to, I know she isn’t asking. But I want to.

  “I have a girlfriend. Jessica. She is… amazing. I think you would like her.” She gives another nod.

  “She is pregnant. I got her pregnant.” God I sound like an idiot. “And she is tough, I know that they are okay.”

  I breathe in a deep sigh and take another sip from the bottle. I’ve barely made it halfway through and I’m already heavily buzzed.

  “We fought before I came down here.”

  I don’t look at Beryl and swallow the last of the whiskey. As suddenly as the gates opened on Jessica they have shut. I shake my head, reliving the trip to the airport when Jessica dropped me off to fly to Los Angeles. She wanted me to take a job working for her dad. I told her I was going to join the Marines. That was the whole fight. So weird to think back on it. Especially now.

  That was our entire fight. Why?

  I thought that I was wasting potential if I stayed around. That the military could somehow tap into a hidden wellspring of ambition.

  She told me I was throwing my life away and I told her I didn’t want to waste my life doing menial labor for her father. That sentence haunts me the most.

  Beryl is gone. I hear her rustling around in the suite. She comes back a moment later with a pen and pad of paper. She sits on the bed, pen poised over the blank page, a distressed look on her face. Then I remember. It’s been over a year since she wrote something… She scribbles on it with a shaky hand and hands the pad to me.

  It’s going to be okay.

  I give her a nod, my turn to be quiet.

  I look at her. Eyes locked onto something distant, silence deeper and louder than anyone or anything I’ve ever known.

  We make for an odd team. We know each other but we don’t. I feel better telling her about Jessica. It’s implied that I was an asshole. I could have told her sooner. I should have. Maybe I didn’t tell her because I didn’t want to bring more guilt or fear into that room. One less bit of despair.

  Or maybe I thought I was going to die and I didn’t want her to know that I was a jerk.

  And now?

  Beryl takes the bed and I make mine on the floor. At first I piled blankets and pillows into a nest, thinking to treat myself to some luxury. It was too soft. The starch of the blankets was a shock to raw nerves. The pillows too foreign for my head.

  My hands clasp together as I curl into a ball. The most comfortable position for me when I had chains on my wrists. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to break the habit of sleeping like this.

  Or if I’ll be able to sleep.

  I get up and pound another nuke of vodka before returning to my makeshift bed. I should be happy. Fuck, I should be sleeping soundly. But it’s hard to feel free as I curl up on a floor, in a corner, missing the feel of an old red blanket.

  Chapter 11

  I puke that morning. I should have vomited over the balcony but instead I ran into the bathroom. Bits of soup mixed with water and whiskey splash into an empty toilet.

  I didn’t think I drank that much.

  I look at myself in the mirror. Eyes peer out at me from deep sockets and there is a sheen on my pale forehead beneath hair grown shaggy and wild. My neck throbs with pain. The burns are angry and swollen, the scabs oozing pus and red lines radiate out from the edges.

  “You look like an animal.”

  I give my reflection a feral grin. The jagged remains of my back teeth wink out at me. I do indeed look like some creature. Starved and ragged and beaten.

  And ill.

  My stomach forms a fist that clenches and unclenches. Curiosity makes me take off my shirt. Bruises and cuts and thick scars mottle my skin. But what scares me the most is how emaciated I am. I breathe heavily, watching my protruding ribs rise and fall with pallid breath.

  This is going to be a long day.

  We should stay put. I know we should. Stay at the hotel and rest and recover. But we are too close to the prison. Too close to that man. I try to fool myself into thinking that a walk will make me feel better.

  We make our way inland and I shiver even though it has to be ninety degrees or more. I am sick. My neck pulses to the beat of my heart and I have a fever. I wonder if Stuart will somehow still be the death of me. My new shoes crunch on broken glass as we pass a car with the
windows knocked out. Someone graffitied the side, bold letters spelling “I TRIED.”

  Beryl looks back at me and I realize I have stopped walking. The world presses in on my eyes. Thoughts are slow, slurring through my mind in a thick fog. I have something important to say but I cannot remember what it was. She comes back and grabs my hand, leading me in a new direction. I find myself watching the ground as we keep walking, flashes of broken glass and discarded jewelry and once a pool of blood the only things I see.

  I trip, surprised to find myself walking up stairs. We are at a CVS that sits on what must have been a busy street corner. Cars with doors open sit on the side walk and flood the parking lot, haphazardly parked. The doors to the building are open and smashed glass is everywhere. There is a strong odor, a stench I have grown familiar with.

  Bodies line the floor in every aisle, scattered here and there in ones and twos. We cover our faces and I totter after her back towards the pharmacy, stopping as we see the mound. Men and women are heaped together in a half moon ring around the pharmacy counter, bodies an oozing mass of decomposition. I see puckered bullet wounds. The uniforms of two cops peek out beneath a pile of bodies. The shelves have been picked clean, everything that had any medicine in it stolen by a panicked populace.

  Beryl leads me outside and sits me on the steps in a small patch of shade. She disappears back inside and returns with bottles of water. She leaves again. I can just make her out her inside, stooped over bodies, rifling through pants and coats and backpacks. I hear her puke. She comes back outside and hands me a tube of Neosporin before heading out to the parking lot. I hiss in pain as my hands rub the ointment on the suppurating burn. Soft skin peels back and I feel oily, viscous fluid coat my fingers. I shiver, new beads of cold sweat breaking out on my forehead.

  Beryl is opening car doors now, rifling through purses and back seats and glove compartments. I see her take a deep breath before disappearing into the back seat of a car. She reappears with a small vial that she holds up to her face as she reads the label. It is discarded.

  I close my eyes and perhaps I doze although I’m not quite sure. I hear a slam and open my eyes to see Beryl opening the trunk of another car. I try to call out to her, to tell her that this is pointless and that she should rest. My voice comes out hoarse and raspy, the side of my neck giving a twinge in response.

  I unscrew my water bottle and try to drink as much as I can. I manage a few sips. Always funny to me how water, the most important thing for your body, can taste so foreign, so alien when you are ill.

  I wake up to Beryl’s hand on my shoulder. She holds up two small bottles, I lean forward to read them but I’m having a difficult time focusing on the letters. “Antibiotics?”

  She nods, a look of triumph on her face.

  “Aren’t you getting a little tired of saving me?” My chapped lips have trouble forming the words.

  Her eyes narrow and she shakes my shoulder and prods me until I get up. I notice she now has a backpack that hangs heavy on her small shoulders. She helps support me and leads me down the street towards a string of houses.

  “I’m still a Burden, huh?”

  Her silence is an angry one and I chide myself for venturing down the road of self pity. I grit my teeth and will my body forward, fingers clutching at the small bony shoulder of the woman who damn near carries me.

  I stare at the line of pictures on the mantel. Stuart and a friend on a boat holding a large fish. Stuart with his arm around a teenager wearing a graduation cap and gown. Stuart smiling in a suit, alone.

  “So, Harlan is it? Where you from?”

  He deposits the tray of sausages on the counter, fresh from the grill. He chops a carrot, hands moving slowly and carefully.

  I sip from a beer he has provided. “The best place on the face of the earth. Montana.”

  He turns and arches a brow at me. “The best place?”

  “The last of ‘em.” I smile and he smiles back but I can tell he doesn’t get the joke.

  “Whereabouts in Montana?”

  I tell him about Somers, about how it sits at the top of a huge lake. It feels good to talk about it. I tell him about my parent’s home, about the orchards and the garden and the green grass. He nods along and it feeds my hope that they are still alive.

  “You’d like my mom.” As if I know this man. “She’s a badass. Don’t get me wrong…” I lose my train of thought. “She used to work construction,” I finish feebly.

  He smiles. “That’s great. What did you do before…” He waves the knife in the air around him.

  “Odd jobs. Been hauling hay lately. Used to dig irrigation.” He nods along, seemingly pleased by my response.

  I turn back to his living room. A desk sits by the window, a stack of books sitting on the far corner. I move to examine them, wondering if he’d let me borrow a couple.

  “What’s your dad do?”

  It’s not as hard to talk about as it used to be. Especially not now. “He passed. Before all this.”

  I wait for an apology, but Stuart just nods and goes back to making a salad.

  “I think, I think it was a good thing…”

  I stare down at a hair clip sitting by the books. It distracts me from what I was saying. I wonder if he has a daughter. Had. I shouldn’t ask. I should… What was I talking about?

  I don’t feel so good. Lightheaded. I take a swig of beer and shake my head.

  “You feeling okay?”

  I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t seem to speak. I put down my beer, try to excuse myself.

  “Where’s the bathroom…?”

  I sink to the ground, the room spinning around me. There is the sound of a door opening. The slow stump of feet as a lopsided gait approaches me. I smell the stink of Stuart’s shirt as he drags me up stairs. The clasp of the iron manacle and the click as he locks it. “I will have use for you in my kingdom, boy.”

  Please God, no.

  I fight the chains.

  I can’t go back.

  I can’t go back! Let me go!

  I struggle to break free of the stupor, fear and panic gripping me. Beryl’s face swims into view. She looks worried. I feel a wet cloth on my forehead, taste the chalky water that she makes me drink. I sink back into sleep.

  I stare at a TV. My mother is calling me, telling me the family is outside. I can’t stop staring at the TV. It flips from one movie to another, then to a TV show, then to a YouTube sketch, then through what seems like all the shows ever made. I can’t seem to look away as my mother calls again, and again, more and more desperate each time. It’s as if I need to see one more thing, to find one more thing before I can leave.

  What that is I do not know.

  I wake up on a couch in a dark room. A wet cloth covers my forehead. I feel weak, my lips are chapped and blistered.

  Water.

  There is a plastic water bottle sitting on a small table next to me. Two pills sit next to it. I hear breathing and see Beryl curled up on the floor a few feet away, mouth slightly open as she sleeps a heavy sleep.

  I drink some water and swallow the pills and stare at a tan ceiling stained brown with watermarks.

  I dread sleep even as I sink back into nothingness.

  I am back in my friend’s house, sitting in the middle of the living room. “Get your ass out here man, c’mon! We got more drinking to do!” Silence. “C’mon, you can’t be that hungover, get out here!” I walk down the hall and bang on a door. There is a whimper from inside and I laugh, push the door open. Brown blood pours from my friend’s nose. His face is ashen, stark in contrast to the burst capillaries in his eyes that turn them red. He raises a hand and tries to speak.

  “Har. Help me.”

  I open my eyes. A cat is watching me from the windowsill.

  Where am I?

  I roll over, Beryl is gone, just a small pile of blankets assure me that, at least, that wasn’t a dream. Two more pills set next to a new water bottle that I guzzle greedily. I pause
, touch my neck. There is a bandage covering the burn. The throbbing has faded, I turn my neck until I feel the slightest sting. It’s getting better.

  “Beryl?”

  There is no response. Not that there would be. I slowly get up. God I stink. I slowly explore, two steps here, another step to this wall to rest, poking around what must be a ground level apartment. I find the bathroom, a toothbrush sits on the sink on top of a note. A shaky hand has scrawled Harlan.

  I take a few protein bars from the counter and a bottle of water and walk outside. This is enough to exhaust me and I pause to lean against the wall. The apartment opens up into a communal lawn surrounded by a seven foot tall fence. A tall building looms directly to my right, Westchester Medical Plaza emblazoned near the top. I sit on a ratty lawn chair and eat my food. I barely get one protein bar down. Water is all I seem to want at the moment. I am impatient for Beryl to come back. She is coming back, right?

  A chorus of barks erupt from down the street, high-pitched yips and snarls that rise and fall and abruptly end. I totter across the lawn and out of the gate, shading my eyes as I cast about for some sign of Beryl.

  Nothing.

  Silence returns to the street. I have no idea what to do. I am sweating profusely, heartbeats throbbing in my ears. I lean against the wall and scan each way for her slender form.

  Nothing.

  I see that we are just a block and a half from the CVS. There is an urgent care another half block away. Between that and the medical plaza, I wonder if Beryl could have avoided digging through bodies for antibiotics. Where is she?

  An hour of fretting and I finally see her form turn the corner. She is pushing a shopping cart filled to the brim with items.

  I totter out into the street. “Where have you been?” I don’t mean to sound so angry. She pauses, then keeps pushing the cart. As she gets closer I see that she is filthy, her arms and neck coated in a thick coat of grime bisected by streaks of sweat. Sweat, and tears. I wonder what it cost her to go out on her own.

  “Stop. I’ll take it from here.” She shrugs and moves aside.