by J. D. Palmer
We run down the steps, shouldering in as she puts her hand on the door.
Please be open. Please oh please be open.
It jiggles. Locked.
“Let me.” Theo pushes everyone aside and then wraps his hands around the handle. He looks back at us crowded in and we back up the steps to give him room, Steven and I turning to watch the street. He strains at the door, putting his weight into it before relaxing. “I can break it open. It’s gonna be loud.”
Shit.
We look around, Steven runs up the steps to try the main doors. Locked. We are running out of time. Shit shit. A twisted fire bolt strikes a distant part of the city followed by a crash of thunder that escalates, each echoing boom trying to outdo its predecessor.
“Wait for the thunder. We’ll use it to cover.”
He turns and looks back at me. “Do we have time?”
I nod. We can’t risk the sound. I hope I’m right. He tests the door, twisting and pulling it as we wait for the next flash of lightening.
Come on. Come on. Come on!
There. A spiderweb of light crackles on the horizon and Theo barely waits for the first responding rumble before attacking the door. He pulls with a demonic snarl on his face as the heavens roar their discontent and there is a scream on the far side of the metal door as screws are ripped from their rivets. He creates a gap in the door and works his large fingers in to give him more leverage.
With a shudder it is wrenched open, so swiftly it knocks Theo back into the wall behind him. We file in and I clap Theo on the shoulder as I pass. He pulls the door shut behind him. It grinds to a halt inches away from being closed, the frame too warped to receive its former companion.
“Leave it!”
We file through a basement hallway until we find the stairs. It’s pitch black in the stairwell and we fumble our way up. A short trip. It’s only two levels. We are spit out in the middle of the building, a dark hallway with a large window at each end. Another flash from the storm outside shows us a couple doors before we are plunged back into darkness.
“See if one is open.”
We feel our way along the walls, jiggling handles as we go until we are on the far side. Everything is locked. I run into the leg of a desk that sits below the window, cursing as something tips over and falls to the carpeted floor.
I run my hands over the desk and feel more objects. What are these… Potted plants? Or what’s left of them. Outside beams of light flash as a troop of men clears the street. We need to get into one of these rooms. We need to have a door between us and them, even if for a minute.
“Can you open this Theo?”
I don’t hear anything for a second, and then the whisper of his hand as it traces the doorway.
“It’s heavy. Opens inward. I don’t know, I can try.”
“Wait.” Beryl is next to me, a clink and rattle as she does something with the pots on the desk. We stand in silence, only the sounds of Beryl’s scrabbling and our breathing. There is a shout outside. We tense, waiting for the crash in the basement as they come pouring into the building. I don’t want to die here. I don’t want my friends to die here. How do we leave? That’s all I want. I don’t care about rescuing John anymore, I want to get the fuck out of here. I don’t want to die, shackled in this room, a beast tamed by an evil man. I shouldn’t be here-
“Got it!” A gentle exultation from Beryl and then the sound of her fumbling with the door. Metal on wood, metal on metal as she searches for the keyhole.
Click.
We file into a lofted apartment and I lock the door behind us. There is a door chain and I slide it home as well. Every little bit helps.
A small hallway leads into an open room with an adjacent kitchen. Stairs go halfway up a level to the bathroom and then continue to a small bedroom.
The place is a shoebox.
Balcony doors on the far side of the room face a courtyard away from the street, dim light filtering in from a moon I cannot see. I can hear the shouts of Chinese soldiers outside. It sounds like an argument.
This is surreal. Hours ago I went from driving home to jumping off of a bridge to being hunted in the streets of San Francisco by a foreign enemy. Perhaps I’m still trapped in Stuart’s prison, a permanent smile on my face, glazed eyes staring at nothing as I live inside an impossible dream. Perhaps none of this is real.
Keep it together.
The apartment is musty, windows closed and locked, months of dead plants and spoiled food fouling the air. No bodies. I guess it can always be worse.
We do a quick ransack of kitchen cabinets, faces covered, thankfully coming away with three bottles of water and a couple Snickers bars. We file up the stairs, away from the door and the stench, and collapse on and around a queen size bed covered in carefully made dark blue satin sheets. A large window sits up high in the lofted ceiling, the moon finally peeking in through the clouds to cast a pale light over the room. Theo lies back with a large forearm covering his eyes. Beryl sits in the spot next to him. She shivers, arms wrapped around herself, her runny nose causing her to make sniffling noises every few seconds that she does her best to muffle. She looks exhausted.
Steven sits on the ground in the corner. He stares at the floor, a defeated look on his face. “What do we do?”
All I want to do is lay my head down somewhere away from everything. A dark place hidden from a world gone mad. I want time. Time away from all of this. Time outside of time so that I can rest and recover and not lose another day to a universe gone sideways.
Instead I go to the large chestnut dresser and start pulling out clothes. “Get warm.” I toss a hooded sweatshirt at Beryl and one at Theo. I empty out the rest of the drawer and toss the neatly folded clothes into a pile in the corner. I grab the dresser and start to pull it across the room. “We make an escape route,” I say to the confused looks. They watch, too tired to offer help as I maneuver it beneath the window. I climb up, my waist now even with the bottom of the window. I undo the latch and slowly slide it open. Cold air flows into the room, flooding it with the smell of old rain. I pop the screen and stick my head outside. A white roof with a patchwork design of caulking and decay, small dips and divots making pools of brackish water. Across the way the other window stares at me, shades drawn. And to my left lies the neighboring rooftop.
At least we can make a run for it.
I climb back down and sit down on the floor next to the bed. “If need be we can hide out there. You hear anything we go out.” Beryl nods. I think she is the only one listening.
“What do we do?” Steven repeats.
“Rest. Wait for the search to die down.” I can feel his grimace. “We can’t keep going like this. Even if we could go outside.”
His voice is tired, hoarse with exhaustion and fear. “Can we go out the window?”
“We could. It’s not far to the next roof. In an hour though, okay? We try now we are just going to get caught or fall off of the edge. We aren’t any help to John dead.”
He lets out a bitter laugh. “Not sure we are any help to him anyways. Fucker is probably already dead. And we will be too, because of him.”
No one says anything, too tired to try to comfort or refute what he said. It’s the truth, lying to him would be an insult.
We pass around the bottles of water, putting one aside for later. I hope that’s smart. Might be better to drink it now than put our hopes in a future that looks so bleak. I split a Snickers with Beryl and we sit in silence for awhile. Theo sleeps, gently snoring. Beryl also dozes, one hand draped over the bed to clasp mine.
I squeeze it periodically. A reminder that it’s there and to let her know that I’m here. How quickly we moved on from yesterday’s conversation. Here we are, trapped in a room together, again. All we have is each other. All we have is living in the moment. If this is our destiny then I will hold onto whatever succor I am offered.
I nod off, jerking awake as I my head lolls to the side. I reposition, trying not to groan. Th
e ache in my muscles is only outdone by the sting on my arms and my feet.
Moonlight glints off of Steven’s eyes. “Try to sleep, man.”
He looks at me, almost says something, then just shakes his head as tears threaten to fall. I get it. I couldn’t sleep if my sister was facing god knows what.
“Why didn’t you say you had been here before?” I ask softly.
He gives me a weird look. “Didn’t think I had to tell everyone all the cities I’d been in.”
“Just thought that maybe with Mickey and… Figured it would have come up.”
He snorts. “I had other things on my mind.”
He is touchy about it. I let it go. Minutes pass in silence and I begin to drift off again, even with a mind preoccupied with finding a way through tomorrow. Thoughts driven by fear start to worm their way into my exhausted brain. What if we just sleep? Wait for the soldiers to leave? Sneak out of here? Sneak out of the city… We can’t possibly save John, can we? Steven will eventually understand, right?
A whisper from across the room, barely audible. I open my eyes, wondering if I dreamt it.
“What did you say?”
He gives a heavy sigh. Silence for a long minute.
“I’m gay.”
Quiet reigns again, a little deeper than before. I had no idea. And at the moment, with everything happening, this admission catches me off guard.
“I used to come up here and… party. My parents thought I was seeing a girl. My brother was the only one who knew. And it was hard, before. Ya know? Even with all the pride shit and all that. Part of you still feels like a freak. Like something is wrong inside of you.”
He pauses for a second. I wish I knew something to say. I suck in these situations.
“And before all this you worry about acceptance. Like I couldn’t even tell my own parents. Man… How much worse when the world ends? Ya get me? What purpose can a gay man possibly have when mankind is dying out? I’m a freak, and worse I’m a useless freak.” He shakes his head. “I was so afraid to tell you guys. What if you wanted me to leave? What would I do?” He raises a forestalling hand. “I know you wouldn’t have. I know that now.”
He wipes at his face as he looks me in the eyes for the first time. “At Camelot, you know, I was so scared I would get found out. They might kill me. But then part of me was kind of hoping…” He pauses as his composure breaks, he sniffles and the sound of his snot and breath is loud, for a moment bringing me back to where we are.
“I know it’s bad. I know… But I hoped that no women had survived, ya know, so that everyone else could kind of see what it’s like to be so alone.”
Now that he has started speaking the flood gates have opened, and he pours out all the thoughts and concerns and fears that have haunted him.
“And when all this went down and people started dying I was alone. John was gone and I thought for sure he had died too. And I was going to kill myself. I was gonna… And then my brother gets home and he… stops me. And all of this shit that he’s doing. All of the ‘every life is precious shit,’ that’s because of me. That’s because he thinks I don’t have any hope. But I do.”
Slivers of moonlight stream down his cheeks and drip onto the carpet.
“We will find your brother.” It’s all I can muster, and it falls far short of what’s necessary. He needs to hear something else. Something, anything. I don’t care that he’s gay, for fuck’s sake I’m just glad he turned out to be a good person.
“I think you’re an idiot.”
I mean to continue the sentence, some variation of telling him that he is stupid for believing we would exile him for something so trivial. But he laughs. He laughs and I think he gets it and for once, maybe, I might have said the right thing. Behind me there is no change in the breathing of the two sleepers, but Beryl gives my hand the tiniest of squeezes.
Chapter 31
I had a lot of potential growing up. So I was told. And I thought that if I could just figure out what I wanted to do, I would be fine. I thought you had to do something. Something. But as I sit here, holding my child and staring at Beryl… Jessica… I know it doesn’t matter.
“Har.”
I know that it doesn’t matter if I do something. I am who I am. I survived and my soul mostly did, too. Mostly. Enough to still give love if not receive it. I take her hand and stare down at our child-
“Har!”
I’m jolted awake from my dream. Steven hovers over me. As soon as my eyes focus on him he’s up and moving to the bed to wake Theo.
Boots thump on the floor below us and a door is kicked in. A sign of how exhausted we are that we slept through them coming into the building. Or the building next door. Or the first fucking floor.
I roll over onto my knees and reach up to wake up Beryl. She’s sleeping on the edge of the bed, curled into a ball. She looks at peace. Face unpinched by worry or distress, sleep unbroken by dreams of Stuart.
“Beryl. Time to move your ass,” I whisper.
She sits upright like an alarm went off. I guide her to the dresser and get her climbing. Steven follows her up. Feet pound down the hall and rifle butts hammer on the handle of our door. Steven is out the window and I clamber up after him. They are battering on the door. It seems to be giving them trouble.
The chain on the door.
I turn, stare down at Theo, he understands it at the same moment that I do. With the chain in place then someone must be inside. And there are no dead bodies in here, impossible for the previous owners to have sealed the door. They’ll know we were here. Only a matter of time before they follow us out onto the roof.
How could I be so stupid?
The door splinters as rifles hammer and boots kick it in and then they are inside, boots stomping as they start down the hall. Theo and I stare at each other. Fuck. Fuck. We’ve hesitated too long. Theo melts back into the shadows by the closet. I slither down and get into the bed and under the covers. An instant to see Beryl’s eyes go wide before a heavy tread starts on the stairs.
There are two of them coming up. More searching the room below. Flashlight beams flicker up and down the walls as they scan. I slide my knife from my pocket, fingers slick on the handle. I feel so exposed. I don’t look like a corpse, just a clump of blankets. I loll my head to the side, affecting a wide-eyed gaze even as my hair and the blankets cover most of my face. Fuck. I don’t look fucking dead. Fuck. Fuck. Am I breathing too much? Stop breathing. Fuck.
I feel sick. Terror grips me and drains me of strength. My limbs don’t feel heavy anymore. I can’t feel them at all. My body has become nothing but a beating heart and fear. Wouldn’t it be better to just burrow deeper and pray that they don’t come near? Maybe they won’t look. Maybe they’re lazy. Do they really want to be here?
Fuck fuck fuck.
Stairs squeak as they get closer to the top. I don’t even know if I can use the knife I so desperately hold onto, I feel so weak from fear. Voices whisper to each other and they pause. I feel light dance on my hair and the side of my face.
Any minute they’ll shoot.
Voices whisper and the final step groans as they enter the room.
A gun starts to prod the blankets when there is a hiss, a whisper of exhaled breath and a smack of skin on skin. I throw back the blankets as the second soldier turns to see his friend struggling to break free, hands clawing at Theo’s forearm as he throttles him. The man raises his gun and I stab him without thinking, the blade going into his back and rebounding off of a rib. The man grunts and fires his gun, and I stab him again. He falls down and he is moaning and I don’t know if he is dying or not. He rolls onto his back and I trust the blade into him again, my hands slick with blood, and he continues to cry out softly, small gasps of pain and horror and I wonder how he can still be alive.
Running footsteps and two more charge up the stairs. I try to grab the rifle but it’s slung over the dying man’s shoulder. I abandon it to slide behind the wall. Lights flashing as they run up, v
oices high with tension yelling names or questions or both. The light illuminates the feet of their compatriot as it kicks out in its last gasp of strength as Theo drains it of life.
They come recklessly.
I grab the first barrel that goes by, swinging it up as I stab down into the second man with the knife. I hit him where the neck meets the shoulder, the blade biting deep. He falls backwards down the stairs as the first fires the rifle, a double blast that numbs my hand holding the barrel. I bring the knife around to stab him but he swivels with me, using the gun as a shield as he shoves me back towards the bed. I won’t let go of the barrel, dragging him around and we topple into the covers. We roll over into the tangled sheets, flailing at each other in a bed that witnesses one last intimate moment.
He lets go of the gun to pin my knife hand, then raises a hand to hit me in the face. Once. Twice. I have to release the gun to defend myself. We grapple with no semblance of technique, hands clawing and grasping at each other, scrabbling at each other’s faces and necks, snarling and gasping and heavy grunts as we do our best to kill the other.
Theo crosses to help. Gunfire erupts from the landing in front of the bathroom. The soldier I stabbed is still in the fight, Theo is pinned on the far side of the room.
I’m larger than my opponent. I wrestle him over and we topple off the bed, the back of his head knocking into the bed stand. Out of the corner of my eye I see Beryl sliding back into the room. A distraction that almost costs me. The man pulls a pistol from his holster and swings it up into my stomach. I roll in a panic. The bullet scorches a line down the side of my ribs.
The pain jolts the animal inside of me. Rage seeps into my limbs and I feel a feral snarl stretch the scar along the side of my face. I scream, primal rage and fear and a release of frustration. I surge into the man, a punch followed by a head-butt that stuns him. I knock the gun hand aside and pin it to the ground before slashing across his throat with the knife. It’s a shallow cut, but he bleeds. He bleeds and I see the defeat in his eyes, the hands that are holding my wrists willowing as his strength ebbs. I push the knife downwards, pivoting to get more leverage on the back of the blade. One second. Another. Sweat dripping from my forehead to mix with the blood on his chin. Our eyes lock.