Transcendence: Chronicles from the Long Apocalypse: Book One

by Benjamin Wilkins

  Bobby-Leigh sighed, defeated. “I’m just nine.”

  “You know, I went to Walmart when I was nine.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. And I wasn’t nearly as mature as you are.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “Nope.”

  Jen had disliked Jimmy almost from the second she’d met him. It had been one simple exchange that had set her off. If she could have remembered it, she’d have laughed at how stupid it had been for her to be so upset by it. She’d just burned her hand on a pot of boiling water and, exaggerating the pain a little bit for effect, dumped a bottle of nearly frozen ice water over the wound. It wasn’t a bad burn and the ice water had done the trick just fine, but Jimmy had had the nerve to suggest that she should have used warm water instead of cold. He’d cited some fucking Swedish study nobody had ever heard of as his source.

  Warm water. Yeah, right. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with this dude? she’d thought. It was a pretty smug-ass thing to say after she’d already treated the burn with cold water. I mean, what the fuck am I supposed to do with his little nugget of knowledge from fucking Sweden? I already treated the fucking burn!

  The only reason she’d been able to see for him to have volunteered information like that after the fact was to make her feel stupid, which was a pretty asshole thing to do when you’re just meeting somebody. And all of that was beside the main point that everybody knows you treat mild burns with cold fucking water, except apparently the stupid Swedes. She’d been so pissed that she’d unleashed a whole hellfire of expletives at him at the time, but since then, her hormones, the lack of any other suitable potential boyfriends, and a little bit of honest attraction had muddled the whole thing up until she couldn’t place the source of her hatred for the boy anymore, yet clung on to it for dear life just the same.

  Jimmy was a genuinely kind-hearted boy and had never intended to hurt her feelings. Not that it mattered, since her wrath had not stopped him from crushing on her in the slightest. In fact, her vulgarity had had the opposite effect on his young heart.

  Brennachecke knew his son had the same beautiful heart his mother did. He’d found it frustratingly useless in the daily routine. But at that moment, while hiding in the doorway, he realized it was that seemingly infinite capacity for empathy that had made him fall so hard for the boy’s mother in the first place. Watching from the shadows, he decided to let Cooperman off the hook for promising the boy something the man had no authorization to give. In fact, he decided to suggest that Cooperman take the kids out himself. Walmart was basically empty at this point. The risk was pretty low. He could send Ace and JP with them just to be safe.

  “Tell you what, dude,” Jen said. “I’ll talk to Cooperman.”

  “You will?”

  “Fuck yes, sister.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yeah?”

  Bobby-Leigh nodded and smiled. This was before the goth makeup and dyed black hair. Before the little girl had started carrying an ax like it was a security blanket. This was back when Bobby-Leigh was still a virgin to killing men. She had looked fragile and innocent back then. They would soon all learn that she was anything but that. However, for now there were potatoes and a momentum of communication with her sister that Jennifer wasn’t about to let go of.

  Jen saw a light in the little girl’s eyes for the first time since they’d watched it blink out of their uncle’s. She racked her brain for something else to say, anything that would keep it going, but nothing came to her for a long time. Finally, looking at the stupid spud in her hand, she remembered a piece of trivia that might work.

  “Did you know that potatoes were the first vegetable grown in space?”

  “Why would you want to grow potatoes in space?”

  “This was back when dudes did shit like that.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, dude.”

  “Probably for the same reason the farmers are growing them now,” Jimmy chimed in. “You see, Bob, my dad says potatoes are kind of like this superfood. Easy to grow. Lots of calories, lots of vitamins.”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  “What?” Jimmy said, confused by the quick turn toward anger the conversation had taken.

  “Don’t call her Bob.”

  “It’s okay, Jen.”

  “No, it’s not,” Jen told her sister. “That’s not your name. We’ve been here for almost two weeks. The dude should know your name.”

  “I didn’t mean anything. I just— Bobby-Leigh, Bob . . . it just seemed like—”

  “It seemed like what?”

  “Nothing. Forget I said anything.”

  “Bob is short for Robert,” Jen said.

  “So is Bobby,” Jimmy said. “See where I was—”

  “Her name is Bobby-Leigh, dude. That’s what it says on her birth certificate. It’s not fucking Robert.”

  “Yeah, okay. I was thinking more like Roberta-Lee. Like maybe she was named after Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general or something like that.”

  “We’re from fucking Maine, dude. What kind of fucked-up New England parents would name their daughter after the general of the separatist states?”

  “I don’t know. Lee was a brilliant commander. West Point even has a barracks named after him. In fact, he didn’t even really support the breaking up of the Union, he just happened to be born in Virginia so he—”

  “Look, whatever, dude. Her name’s Bobby-Leigh. I don’t need a fucking history lesson. I just need you to get her fucking name right.”

  Brennachecke, who was still eavesdropping, smiled in the shadows. The lady doth protest too much. She obviously liked him and just didn’t see it yet. Why were women like that? Always making things so much more complicated than they needed to be. And what was with this girl’s mouth? He was going to have to pull her aside and talk to her, again.

  “So if we got to go to space, we’d still have to eat potatoes?” Bobby-Leigh asked, desperate to change the conversation back to something more civil.

  “Fuck. Probably,” Jen said, still tweaking with adrenaline. Not the kind that could set the berserker inside her loose, but the other kind. The kind that made her feel warm between her legs in a way she’d never felt before, and a little sick to her stomach.

  Jimmy looked at her, pleading with his eyes for her to cut the swearing out and give him a break. He’d just been trying to help her, for the love of Christ, why was she tearing him a new one?

  The message was received loud and clear, but she tried to ignore it. When she smiled at him, she told herself it was to cover her own thoughts. What the fuck was he doing anyway? She’d never asked him for his help. She didn’t need his stupid-ass assistance. Her sister was her problem. She’d fix it. By. Her. Self.

  Jimmy blushed, and somehow that defused the hormone bomb Jen’s body was driving her crazy with. Or maybe she’d just run out of steam. It didn’t really matter.

  “I wouldn’t mind. At least we’d be in space,” Bobby-Leigh said, still trying to break the tension.

  “True that, dude.” Jen smiled. “Fucking space, can you imagine what life would be like? All weightless and shit. Just fucking floating around, like some asshole without a care in the world—because the motherfucking world would like fucking be, literally, beneath you, dude.”

  “Jennifer!” Brennachecke yelled from the doorway, no longer able to turn a deaf ear to the language spilling like toxic waste from the girl’s mouth.

  “I warned you,” Jimmy whispered, to which Jen just rolled her eyes.

  “What?” she said, feigning cluelessness as to why the old army dude was so mad.

  “Do you know what separates humanity from animals?”

  “Uh, there’s like some many things, dude.”

  “No, Jen, there really isn’t. There is just one thing. Language
.”

  “Okay,” Jen said. She’d heard Jimmy go on and on about how much his father hated cursing, but he’d never explained why. She was genuinely curious because, all things considered, it seemed so fucking stupid to get upset over.

  “Do you know why you like to curse so much?”

  “I wouldn’t say I like it. It just comes out that way.”

  “No, it doesn’t. You like it. It makes you feel good to talk that way,” Brennachecke explained. “Swearing triggers a chemical response in the brains of people who say those kinds of words. And it triggers a similar response in the people who hear them. Language like that connects straight into our fight-or-flight response. It momentarily numbs our pain and triggers adrenaline.”

  “That sounds like a good thing.”

  “Wrong. It’s not a good thing,” Brennachecke said. “Language like that pushes us into a more instinctive, animalistic headspace. It literally makes you, and those listening to you, less human.”

  “Whatever, dude,” Jen said, incredulously.

  “There is a real lack of humanity out there these days, in case you hadn’t noticed. Every f-bomb you drop, it makes it worse. See, our language is one of the clearest reflections of who we are. And you’re not an animal, Jennifer. You’re not one of those beasts masquerading as a person. You’re not a sadistic killer, like the ones who murdered your uncle. You’re one of us. You’re part of the legacy of greatness that put a man on the moon. That wiped out smallpox and polio. That brought any number of species back from the brink of extinction. That worked tirelessly to right the wrongs, inequalities, and destruction around the world.” He looked at her and could tell that he wasn’t getting through. “That went to space and grew potatoes.”

  Jen looked at him. But I do have a monster inside me, she thought. Not that she’d ever tell him that, but it was just as true as it was a secret. If she’d known he’d find that out the hard way and that Jimmy would be killed by it, she may have changed her mind about all the secrecy. But the only part of the future she could see in that moment was that there would undoubtedly be more potatoes to peel tomorrow.

  Brennachecke looked back at her.

  Jen guessed she could try to curtail her bad language around the old man as best she could. Just because she respected him and was grateful for his shelter and protection, even if by his own argument there was a reason she spoke the way she did—which was the message she took away from his little speech.

  She looked down. The weight of her secret was heavy in her heart.

  “Language is our connection to who we are. It hurts me to hear you defecate all over that every time you open your mouth.”

  “So . . . am I going to be punished?” Jen wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that. Particularly if the answer was yes.

  “No,” Brennachecke said heavily. Why did he even bother? Maybe he should punish her. But he didn’t have the slightest idea of what an effective disciplinary action would be for a teenager in the middle of an apocalypse. A little soap in the mouth seemed idiotic, and cutting her tongue out was not something a civilized man worthy of the human legacy he’d just told her about would do. Everything he came up with fell either on the side of the idiotic or the downright uncivilized. Frustrated, he rubbed his face and just stared the little potty mouth down.

  “I’ll try to do better,” she told him. “I really will.”

  Brennachecke smiled sadly at her and touched her cheek. His sigh of frustrated disappointment let her know that he wasn’t really expecting her to be able to change anything. She didn’t know what she was supposed to have said to his little rant, but clearly she’d missed the mark, which really sucked because she had tried to be as respectful as she could. And she’d meant what she’d said too. She really would try to do better, at least around him. She was just too young to understand the difference between not getting caught doing something and not doing it at all in the first place. But she wanted the old soldier’s approval—there was something about Brennachecke that just brought that out in folks.

  Jennifer didn’t really understand what integrity was. Sure, she knew the dictionary definition and could use the word in a sentence well enough. But the depth of character required to consistently act with integrity? The best of folks out there failed daily at that in the best of times. She craved Brennachecke’s approval because the man didn’t give it out lightly. You had to earn it.

  Integrity.

  Righteousness.

  Honor.

  Folks had to have it to get it reflected back, and Brennachecke did exactly that. He was a big mirror of uprightness that Jen simply couldn’t see herself reflected back in. It threatened to break her heart, but she didn’t let on.

  “That goes for you too, Bobby-Leigh,” The old man said to the little girl, trying to make a joke. The little girl hadn’t said so much as twenty words to him since they’d taken her and her sister in, and not a single one of them had been a curse word, so he’d hoped she would find it funny, maybe even finally really talk to him. But she didn’t get the joke. She just nodded solemnly.

  * * *

  Walmart was on the east side of Fairfield. It was one of the first places to be looted in town when the plundering began, just after the National Guard Armory on Stone Avenue, neither of which any longer had any of the obviously useful items like guns, munitions, camping gear, batteries, blankets, and nonperishable food, to say nothing of the drugs in Walmart’s pharmacy, but the superstore was hardly empty. It was ninety-four thousand square feet of building. Even after years of steady and rampant looting, you still could always find something at Walmart. Sam Walton would be proud.

  Cooperman, Ace, and JP escorted the kids across the empty parking lot toward the looming building. Cooperman was in his sixties, a former wood craftsman, a cabinetmaker of sorts. He was extremely good with his hands and was now the group’s doctor, self-taught. Ace was in his late twenties and nobody knew or cared what he used to do for a living. It was his hunting and fishing skills that folks identified him with now. He, along with Dan Patterson, was one of the few hunters of the group. While Ace couldn’t shoot a bow and arrow or hit a target like Dan, he could track and find fish and game better than just about anybody left alive in the country.

  As for JP, the balding man in his forties had been a cook at one of the local joints, but nobody knew that. He was one of the small minority in Brennachecke’s group that practiced TM; like the girls’ uncle had been, he was a trained Transcendental Meditation teacher, but he’d come to Fairfield after Marharishi’s death in 2008. Though Jen and Bobby-Leigh were both meditators themselves, the girls didn’t like JP much because that was all he ever talked about, and the culty, new-agey, overly positive language he used drove both of them nuts and cheapened their own experience of the practice.

  As they crossed the pavement, Bobby-Leigh was actually smiling. The sun was out. Ace had said he was pretty sure that nobody else—friend, foe, or otherwise—was around. It seemed like the kind of day where nothing could go wrong. The kind of day where everybody comes home alive and in one piece. The kind of day that could almost make you believe things would eventually get better. That civilization was not lost. It was the kind of day where Jennifer didn’t feel compelled to drop f-bombs into every sentence that came out of her mouth—a good day that quickly gets forgotten. At least, that’s how it had seemed as the six of them slipped in through the shattered glass doors in the front of the store. But by the time they would make it back outside to the parking lot, it wouldn’t seem that way anymore. It was going to become the kind of day none of them would be able to forget, no matter how badly they wanted to.

  Walmart, in an effort to be more energy efficient, had skylights throughout the retail space of the store, so even without power, the inside of the building was not dark. This was the only reason Brennachecke had allowed the kids to go on this little field trip. If the store had
been dark, he’d never have let them go. Bad things happened in dark places. Unfortunately, bad things also happened in places lit by skylights.

  They stayed together as they looked around. The place was a mess, but that only made it more fun for the kids. The bulk of what was still left in the store was clothing, so that’s where they went first. But they quickly discovered that while there were a lot of clothes left, there were good reasons nobody had taken them. Still, they managed to find a frilly jumper-skirt and a pair of Mary Janes that fit Bobby-Leigh. Not that she’d ever wear them, or so she thought.

  They had better luck in the toy section, where Jimmy found a whole stack of board games. Most folks would have been surprised to learn the importance of board games during an apocalypse, but when you can’t escape into virtual reality, play video games, watch YouTube, or use your smartphone, there is suddenly a remarkably large quantity of time in the day that needs to be filled. So much so that JP, Cooperman, and Ace were almost as excited as Jimmy by the find.

  “Man, I never even thought to look for these!” Ace told Jimmy as they all looked at a deluxe edition of Clue.

  “You know, they made that one into a movie in the eighties,” JP said. “No meditators involved, but . . .”

  “But what?” Cooperman said, irritated by how JP always brought the conversation back to TM, and not for the first time.

  “Nothing. There’s just a lot of actors and directors and producers who meditate, but none of them worked on Clue, to the best of my knowledge.”

  “Who cares?”

  “That’s the tone that hurts my feelings, Cooperman.”

  “Is the game any fun?” Jen asked.

  “Honestly, I don’t remember.”

  Bobby-Leigh watched the conversation until she saw that there was a whole aisle of dolls, completely untouched, just a few yards away. Ace and JP spotted a Scrabble and snatched it up, as Bobby-Leigh slipped slowly down the aisle toward the dolls.

  “I would totally kick all of your asses at that one, dude,” Jen declared.