Shards

by Shane Jiraiya Cummings

  Does the world really need an Antichrist? It's doing a fine enough job killing itself without some supernatural power twisting the knife.

  I couldn't do it---the pill thing, I mean. Not with Abigail watching. Not with Max and Rex carrying on. As I was taking the pills back to the bathroom, Lucia caught me with them and gave me one hell of a thrashing. I think she drew blood. I can look forward to another night lying on my stomach and side. Bitch. Definitely a lake of fire for her. Or something with maggots. Everyone hates maggots.

  May 29

  A girl was waiting in my room when I came home from school today. Sexy-looking private school type. Long dark hair. She said her name was Abigail and that she was my half-sister. We talked all night and Aunt Lucia didn't barge in on me once. Hooray for small mercies.

  June 1

  Abigail (the girl, not the bird) visited again tonight. She was waiting for me after dinner, perched on the window sill. The window was permanently open because of the glass thing.

  We talked for a bit, but then, oh my god (should I say "oh my god"?), the things we did! Tonight has been the best night of my life! She didn't even bruise when we touched!

  I don't care if she's a bird, or my sister, or whatever. She's mine.

  June 4

  The way she moves is like magic. The starlight shimmers in her hair. We walked the gardens tonight and the crows circled above. I thought it was a bit creepy at first, but it was kind of romantic.

  If the world is going to Hell, at least I'll have her here with me.

  June 5 - 6.06pm

  It's my birthday at midnight. The end of days. The big A. I'm not a bad person. I don't want to be. But the world is a sick place. It's in my blood like a disease. It needs to be cleansed. I need to be cleansed. I feel like I'm dying.

  If I'm a deadbeat like my Dad, remember it's in my nature.

  I hope the world forgives me. What will be left of it, anyway. It's all pre-destined, right? It has to go down this way? I'm not a monster, but if I turn into one, I'll always remember the few good things about life.

  I hope people remember the good things about me.

  June 5 - 11.53pm

  This will probably be my last entry for a while. Abigail is waiting down stairs with Max and Rex. Lucia's there too, with a whole bunch of those robed loonies.

  Maybe I can use them to practice on? The thought's only crossed my mind a million times since all this shit was laid on me. Finally, I think there might be some justice in the world!

  If there's work to be done, then I guess I'll have to step up to the plate, right? I figure the first wave will be the horror movie monsters. Freddy. Jason. Pinhead. The dude from Chainsaw Massacre---Leatherface? They'll spread the message, good and proper. Then comes the zombies, not those wack-job sprinting ones but the shambling kind. Then there's the maggots. Maybe zombies with maggots for eyes? Everyone hates maggots.

  Midnight approaches. I can feel it.

  The crows are gathering.

  * * *

  Love in the Land of the Dead

  I ate her brains out of love, but there was more to it than that.

  For months, it was just the two of us, along with the zombie hordes. Apocalypse was a bastard like that, a great gore-spattered lottery. When the city, then the suburb, and then the mall survivors dwindled down to just Laura and I, I felt like I'd won that lottery. Laura was a babe---sassy and a bullseye with a shotgun.

  Life became a blur of eating out of tins, running hand-in-hand, and adrenalin-charged sex. I came to love Laura, and she me, but we hit tough times when the ammo ran out.

  There were so few safe places to hide, and so many zombies. Knots of them clogged every street. As Laura and I eked out a life in the cracks and shadows, I had my realisation.

  We were rushing around, exhausted, in a state somewhere between life and death. But the zombies were different, well, except for the life and death thing. Sure, some of their limbs were missing, and they stunk to high heaven, but by God they were serene. They had such a laid-back lifestyle---never in a hurry, never needing to be anywhere.

  In the end, I really dug their Zen attitude.

  Laura wasn't as supportive of my change of heart as I'd hoped.

  We fought repeatedly; she wanted to look for survivors, while I found myself increasingly fascinated by the zombies lurking at our every turn. Soon enough, our arguments led to carelessness. The zombies found a way into the warehouse where we were holed up.

  Their shambling line encircled us. True to her nature, Laura took to them with a chunk of wood. Her last stand was beautiful to watch---a flurry of bludgeoning and desperation. I loved her more in that moment than I ever had before.

  But even that wasn't enough. The zombies were inexorable---a groaning, stinking tide of arms and teeth. Laura was thrown to the ground, bleeding and unconscious.

  Fascination held me as the zombies moved in. I knew they were hungry but with typical suave they took their time.

  But I got to her first. I had to.

  That's when I ate Laura's brain. Her skull was already cracked, her life already ebbing, and I'd seen enough blood and gore not to get all skittish about it. She tasted salty, like jelly with a hint of chicken. I found out why the zombies hankered for the taste so much. Laura's brain was ambrosia, food for the soul.

  I ate her brains out of love, but there was more to it than that. I'd been feeling it build for weeks. All those eyes watching me, all that expectation. Peer pressure was a bitch.

  I didn't know how else to show my zombie brothers and sisters I really did belong.

  They left me alone from then on. It's a Zen thing, I guess. Zombies are cool like that.

  * * *

  Wrack

  I'll never forget the moment: Louise's eyes widened, a look I first took as wounded pride. Her eyes, though, they stayed wide, her irises dilating, her nostrils flaring, her expression crossing the threshold into panic. A whimper caught in her throat. An instant later, her cheeks bulged. She pressed her palm over her lips, acting a fraction of a second too late. A dribble of brown vomit escaped the corner of her mouth and trickled down the side of her chin.

  Her face had never looked paler. Pale, like her sister Bella.

  That moment, that's when the wrack took hold of our lives.

  Louise ran to the bathroom. The sound of her emptying her guts for what seemed hours is another of those things that will linger with me, although she never seemed to stop after that. Once the wrack took hold, she could barely keep her own spit down for long.

  At least it had interrupted our argument. It was ironic, really, because we'd been arguing about what to do if the wrack claimed one of us. The warnings had been on the TV for a week. Forget bird flu or SARS, this one was the plague to end them all. No cure. No explanations. No good news.

  Louise's bag was half-packed when the wrack overtook her. She wanted to drive out to her Uncle Gary's shack in the bush, hoping to escape the madness---and maybe even me. She was convinced the wrack was God's punishment for the world's wicked ways. She saw no redemption.

  Well, life sucker-punched her, and me not long after.

  She'd been laid up in bed for days, all pale and tinged with green. The vomit had darkened to burgundy and the pain had long set in. That's why it was called the wrack. The body shook, the nerve ends burned, and every second of life became one painful son-of-a-bitch. I'd heard most people died because their bodies just gave up, the way torture victims died in the pauses between atrocities. With that sort of pain, everybody has a time limit.

  I nursed Louise for all those days, despite my own wrack. I'd had the better of the vomiting and the painkillers were still able to soothe me. Louise's screams started on the second day. They trailed off into whimpers by the fourth. Me, I held most of it back behind gritted teeth. When the painkillers stopped working, the cheap tequila and my cache of weed took over.

  That day, day four, through my gritted teeth, enduring bleeding gums, the screaming muscles, and ac
id-fire piss, was when the epiphanies struck, one after the other.

  We'd been together for fourteen months now, Louise and I, shared some great times, too, but that was a long time to put up with her turn-the-other-cheek mentality, her passivity that, at times, drove me mad. With her religious leanings and prudishness, she was no Bella. Her sister, my Belladonna, that dirty-sick bitch, my first. When Bella dumped me to screw some gym-junkie, we both knew it had nothing to do with some other guy. It was about control---her control over me. Dating her kid sister Louise had been the closest thing I could call revenge, but Louise's pretty eyes and soft looks, so unlike her sister, had drawn me in. Revenge dating became pleasant, a routine. That Bella refused to attend family gatherings with Louise and I was a sweetener. It meant I was inside both sisters, under their skin, one way or another.

  But now, with Louise's pretty eyes sunken in bruised caverns, her skin translucent, vomit and spit crusting the side of her face, I realised my love for her was eclipsed by my desire to survive, to live.

  That I still burned for Bella wasn't a surprise, but the realisation that I could abandon Louise for my self-preservation left me retching for half an hour. With my insides scoured and nothing but pain filling my mind, the rest fell into place almost by itself.

  At first I didn't know where my course was leading. Pain makes the mind play strange, strange tricks, so when I hauled myself, legs and arms afire, to the linen cupboard, I fumbled with the blanket, befuddled, struggling to comprehend its purpose, when the spare pillow fell free. As my hand clutched the pillow, the clench a fresh knot of pain, that epiphany I'd had earlier raised its ugly head, and slowly, inexorably, guided me to the bed.

  Louise watched me every step of the way. Her body had doubled up, pinwheeling in pain beneath a sheet stained with her fluids. Through her little whimpers of pain, hoarse and subtly abrasive like over-rubbed sandpaper, her eyes tracked my progress to her. She stared at me, bruised and dirty-eyed, no longer pretty, barely human at all.

  I like to think she welcomed the end of our relationship, especially the way her hand relaxed over mine a minute or two after I clamped the pillow onto her face. She was too wracked to cry out or scream, too weak to resist, too dry and empty to retch any further. My hand shook as I continued press the pillow over her face, every breath a trial of fire and aches. In the haze of my own pain, I had no idea how long I stood rigid-limbed over her. I think I heard a snap but my ears were so dulled by inflammation, for all I knew it could have been a bird striking the balcony window or my own sense of self-worth breaking.

  The vitality fled my body when I eventually released my grip on the pillow. With my grip eased, black stars played in my peripheral vision and a high-pitch whined through my ears. As I slumped to the floor, my vision clouded by the black stars, I distinctly remember hearing an ambulance wailing through the streets. It was the first sound in days I'd heard from the world outside our apartment.

  I woke in an awkward huddle, staring up into Louise's dead eyes as she peek-a-booed from beneath the pillow that claimed her life. I jumped at the sight, banging my elbow on the dresser. It was painful, jarring, but not the waves of pain that filled the previous days. I stood and felt strength in my legs that I barely remembered. A few days of the wrack felt like a lifetime. Flexing fingers, rotating my elbows and shoulders, I could scarcely believe the wrack was losing its grip.

  Something inside me had changed.

  Troubled by merely stiff muscles, I crouched by Louise and removed the pillow from her face. Death had given her serenity but the wrack had taken an ugly toll---the bruises, the pinpricks on her cheeks and neck where blood vessels had burst, red fading to black, and those once-pretty but now sunken eyes. Her lips were blue and her skin was finally as pale as Bella's. Matted hair obscured part of her face, which I brushed free. I felt a tear rise but rubbed it away, kissed my tear-stained finger and then applied it to those blue lips of hers. It was a small gesture, a meek gesture, but enough. It was all I would spare for her. I kept any remaining tears to myself.

  I left her there, choosing to remember our time together and not the ending of it, choosing instead to discover how the rest of the world was coping.

  Information was in short supply. As I stuffed my backpack with food, I flicked on the TV and found only one station still on the air. A newsreader wearing a face mask mumbled progress reports from around the globe, all of it inconclusive, but the look on his face told me all I needed to know. The fear there, the uncertainty, told me a cure was yet to be found. The way things were going, there soon wouldn't be enough people left with the know-how to cook up a cure.

  With my newfound strength, I hefted my pack and pocketed the keys to Louise's car.

  I was never religious and glad of it, but looking in on Louise one last time, at her tiny, ravaged frame, and that Bible she always kept on the dresser on her side of the bed, it left me wondering.

  They say at the end times, the faithful will be tested and the meek will inherit the earth.

  As I headed downstairs to an empty street, listening to screams and agonies that tormented the neighbours, and distant gunshots, clear as church bells, I came to believe that the faithful were being tested. The clarity of thought at that moment was like a burden lifted, like awakening from a dream.

  Bella's apartment was across town. I started the car, leaving my girlfriend dead and cold in our bed, believing Bella, my Bella, would welcome me back. The price of her cure wouldn't bother her, I was sure. I couldn't even remember his name.

  Redemption was only ever for the worthy. For those willing to make sacrifices. Louise never understood but Bella would, my nasty-beautiful Bella. I would show her how to find redemption, how to pass the testing of the faithful and overcome the wrack.

  No, the meek would not inherit the earth.

  * * *

  Genesis Six

  "And the LORD said, I will destroy Man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both Man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I hath made them." --- Genesis 6:7

  "I can hear the ocean, Mummy."

  A roar shuddered across the city like waves pitched onto the shore at the height of summer.

  "Are we going to the beach?" Jessica asked, excited by the abrupt change of routine. She shifted in her seat and fidgeted with the white veil covering her head.

  "No, honey," Libby's voice was taut. "We're just going for a drive."

  Libby scanned for signs of traffic as she gunned the car along the freeway, pushing it beyond the limits of safety. Barely a soul could be seen in either direction. An aura of abandonment hung in the air.

  The people were ignorant as they toiled at work.

  A stale, dusty breeze forced its way through the dashboard vents. The tiniest flecks of grey settled on Libby's sleeve as she jammed the vents closed. The cabin became a mausoleum, entombing them with stagnant air.

  "Mummy, I wanna take this off." Jessica fiddled with the veil.

  "No, sweetie. Leave it on for now. I'll tell you when you can take it off." Libby strained to keep the sharpness from her tone.

  She threw the car into a loping turn as she banked up the off-ramp. Skidding onto the adjunct highway, she blew clear of the slip-lane and weaved through the narrow lanes. The traffic was minimal.

  The roar grew louder as each second passed.

  "We are going to the beach!" Jessica wriggled against her seatbelt. "I wanna see the ocean."

  "No, Jess," Libby snapped, "leave the cloth on."

  As she glanced back at Jess, the car wavered for an instant and threatened to fishtail out of control.

  Libby tugged the steering wheel back to centre and regained control. A more cautious glance confirmed Jess was still wearing the veil, much to her relief. At least she'd be spared the worst. Hopefully no one would notice her face when push came to shove.

  A tense silence engulfed them as Libby braved the narrow highway at speed. The road snaked upward, climb
ing steadily into the city's suburban foothills.

  Knots of confused people gathered by parked cars, many more clumped into crowds by the side of the road. All eyes were fixed on the cityscape and the coast beyond.

  Chancing a look in the mirror, Libby's stomach clenched tight. Her view, like the crowd's, was uninterrupted.

  Dozens of cars from the nearby suburbs scrambled onto the serpentine double lane, ignoring the dazed crowds in their desperation. More and more vehicles joined Libby's flight from the city, forming slow-moving obstacles ahead. She weaved through the erratic traffic as best she could.

  "Where are we going?" Jess's voice was tiny and distant, smothered by the roar as it gathered strength

  "We're going to see your dad."

  "Daddy Sean?"

  "No honey. Your real dad." Her voice cracked. "Not Sean. He's at work."

  Libby's eyes drifted to the revolver on the passenger seat. An expedient death within easy reach. She searched the rear-view mirror; her eyes drifted between her veiled daughter and the horizon behind.

  The rumble reverberated through her skull and rattled the windows.

  Her thoughts lingered on Sean, his gentle touch, his reassuring embrace. With tearful eyes, she ran the car through a flashing orange traffic light, oblivious to the chorus of car horns.

  A glimmer of light beckoned from the hill's summit.

  Her chest tightened at the sight.

  She floored the accelerator, throwing the car around plodding vehicles, mounting the curb in her flight.

  The sky ahead was cloudless. The corona of white light that capped the hill bled into the azure horizon. The blue sky behind her had darkened to black.

  "Who's my real daddy?" Jess asked, ignorant of the people swarming the streets and their panic-stricken faces.

  Libby closed her eyes for a heartbeat, struggling against the weight of Jess' question. The memories lurked behind her eyes. The painful light. Her skin afire under his touch. The cycle of mistreatment, and finally, the abandonment. In so many ways, Jess' true father was a pale shadow compared to the love and support provided by Sean.