“No, sweetie, I think I’ll tag along with Lamar,” Alice said. She stopped, leaned forward and kissed Ethan’s cheek. “Thank you for the offer though. You’re a good man.”
“I just want to do what’s best.”
“I know, sweetie. Lamar is doing what he thinks is best, too.” The terminally gray skies overhead and the arctic winds left little doubt that rain would soon be falling. By this evening, snow would dust the mountains. “He wants to find utopia down there, you know.”
“Maybe that’s just what you’ll find.”
“Maybe. But one person’s paradise might be another’s prison. He doesn’t see that.” Alice opened her arms and Theresa hugged her tightly. “You be a good girl, now, all right?”
“Yes ma’am,” Theresa nodded.
“You take good care of her Ethan.”
Lamar and the boys wandered up with armfuls of snack chips and pretzels and candy bars.
“Let’s move out,” Lamar said, beaming. “We’ll have a look around and be back for you before sunset.”
“We’ll be waiting,” Ethan said, lying. Alice knew his intentions. Deep down, Lamar probably did, too. Ethan stood, extended his arm and shook hands with the first man he had met after the end of the world. “You be careful.”
“We will,” Lamar said. He hesitated, and then embraced Ethan. “Thanks for getting me this far. I think we can manage from here.”
Minutes later the caravan pulled out of the rest stop on the last leg of its journey, leaving Ethan and Theresa sitting beneath the sycamore.
“We won’t see them again, will we?”
“No.”
“Where will we go now?”
“Well,” Ethan said, watching the icy breeze tease her hair. “We can go just about anywhere. Have you ever heard of the Appalachians?”
JOURNAL ENTRY, SUNDAY, JUNE 10, 0002 AE:
Alice and Lamar left this morning, heading north toward Chicago. It was their third visit since they brought Hannah back to Newfound Gap from Grants Pass. Lamar helped put the finishing touches on the new cabin near Oconaluftee. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay him. Theresa decided to join them on their trip to Canada looking for lone survivors and settlements. They’ll all be swinging back this way in October, when Hannah is due. Alice promised to stay until the baby comes, and hinted she might spend the winter here. Hannah would like that. Between our weekly runs to Cherokee, my hunting and Hannah’s garden, we have plenty of food. Still, we live day to day, knowing we’re both on borrowed time. Everyone is on borrowed time, now. Civilization may be extinct, but humanity might yet endure if it can learn to face hardships and harsh conditions as it struggles to persevere. Paradise is neither Grants Pass nor Newfound Gap; but living either place is far better than the alternative.
Biography
Lee Clark Zumpe
Lee Clark Zumpe is prone to fits of creativity between 2 and 6 a.m. During these seizures, he locks himself in a room in a remote corner of the house and writes. His work has appeared in Weird Tales, Book of Dark Wisdom and Horror Express as well as the anthologies Horrors Beyond and Corpse Blossoms. As a reviewer for Tampa Bay Newspapers, Lee was honored with a Florida Press Award in 0001 AE. Lee and wife Tracey enjoy scouring antique festivals for vintage toys, Victorian ephemera and linens. Contact Lee at [email protected].
Afterword
The latter half of the 20th century is rife with post-apocalyptic fiction. One of my favorite selections in this subgenre is George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides; it paints what I believe to be an accurate picture of what might happen should humanity suffer a population bottleneck due to some form of natural or manmade catastrophe. While archaeologists and paleontologists have shown that the species has managed to claw its way back from the brink of extinction several times, one must wonder if an advanced civilization, ill-equipped to face the day-to-day tribulations of survival, could replicate past recoveries.
Post-apocalyptic fiction often asks whether humanity — in its quest for technology — has sacrificed the very survival instincts that allowed it to flourish. In “Newfound Gap,” I strived to portray Ethan as pragmatic, but cautiously optimistic as he observes the transformation of an advanced society into a more primitive one.
Ink Blots
Amanda Pillar
“Specialists estimate that only one in 10,000 people will survive the genetically altered viruses that have been released across the world in an act of terror.”
The Age Newspaper
Margie put the paper down and ran a hand across the crinkled surface. The faded date read August 29th — that was eleven months ago. She traced the date again and again, absorbing the ink, feeling it soak into her skin. It flooded through her; the words branding themselves into her mind.
Leaning across the kitchen bench, she scanned the headlines of the other papers scattered across the black granite surface. The bench top felt smooth to touch, cool against the indeterminate flavor of the newspapers. Their words swam lazily through her vision, some dominating, others slinking into the background. Pinching the bridge of her nose with her index finger and thumb, she fought to stay focused, but lost. Images swam behind her closed eyelids, colors, bodies…text.
She opened her eyes and looked at the pile of black and white sheets. The letters continued to backstroke through her vision and she shivered. They were taunting her.
The thin sunlight that crept in through the windows slowly sunk into her; washed through her onto the paper. The words seemed to crystallize, deciding to obey the light. “Cure Found” was followed by “More Die”. A sense of defeat surged through her body, dimming the meager warmth of the sun.
Initially, she’d collected the papers as a way of keeping the hope alive. Margie hadn’t believed that the viruses were going to kill everyone. But hope began to fade, much like the ink on her papers. During the riots that had followed the Prime Minister’s ‘Speech of Doom’, she’d spotted “Kayley’s Dream: Grants Pass” printed in bold across the front of a newspaper’s first page. Apparently, some important analyst in the States had announced that the people of Australia needed plans like Kayley’s.
Her post had been quoted underneath.
That had been the last paper she had ever bought. Probably one of the last ever printed.
Kayley’s dream had been an escape. Not a physical one; Grants Pass, Oregon, was 13,280 kilometers from Melbourne. She’d looked it up in the atlas. It had meant that more ink was absorbed by her fingers, but she’d had to do it. Kayley’s words had become a symbol of something — action, she supposed. But so far, she hadn’t managed to do anything about the inspired hope. Margie knew she was trapped, isolated as Australia was. Even crossing to Tasmania was out of the question. The only part of her dream left was the papers.
Margie was dying from the truth of ink stained pages.
Listlessly, she flicked through the sheets, her fingers touching only the white edges, avoiding the text. Her soul — that shrunken, withered pulse inside her — wanted to find something new; something she hadn’t read before. But there was nothing new. There never was. Useless dreams, that’s all it was.
Her soul ran from the ink.
“You can’t keep doing this!”
The sound shattered her reverie, and she turned around, startled. Her heart was pounding, and she could feel her hands shaking. Was someone there?
Margie called out into the silent house, but there was no answer, just a sick sense of déjà vu. It had been her own voice yelling at her. Feeling hollow, she brought a shaking hand to her forehead. She hadn’t even recognized the sound of her voice; it had been so long since she’d spoken to anyone.
“I’m all alone.” The tasteless words seemed to solidify the statement; what it meant. She was the only human for miles.
Standing, she pushed back the chair and walked towards the floor to ceiling windows of her dining room. Her feet felt heavy, like reality was weighing them down. Unconsciously, her hands kept rubbing themselves toget
her; the dry skin rough to touch — different to the papers. Both ink stained.
Looking out the windows she stared at the backyard, at the overgrown swath of colors that varied from dead brown to misty, wishful, green. She felt cornered — cheated by past ambitions. Her pride, her tidy home, her gloriously shallow existence; they made her a prisoner now, stuck between four walls, too afraid to leave for good. Before, her prison, the bricks and mortar, had been a statement of her success. She had felt superior to her friends, family. Look at me, the two million dollar mansion had cried, I’m going to save the world from crime. Save it from what? Stupidity? Selfishness? Greed?
The world hadn’t needed saving.
It was doing just fine without humanity.
Now the house meant nothing; it was just shelter, keeping her safe from the yowls and cries of starving animals; the ones that had survived SVHF, that is.
Margie watched through the window as a fur covered bundle of bones prowled through the yard. Light flashed, distracting her, drawing her eyes away from the garden and focusing them on her reflection in the glass. She winced. Shaggy brown hair, tired blue eyes and a face that was all angles. She turned away.
She didn’t like going outside; hated it. There, the watery sunlight was real — the rays tangible, weighty. The cold air battered her and the scents stung her nostrils; potent reminders that nature didn’t care about her. Not about anyone.
“You can’t stay in here.”
This time, she would have liked to pretend that there was someone else; that she hadn’t finally hit the point where she had absorbed so much ink that she was talking to herself. But she couldn’t lie; not to the scrawny cat outside, not to the windows, not to her shrunken soul.
Margie went back to the papers.
****
Margie was driving. She was wearing sunglasses against the weak light. The skeletons on the side of the road, in the front yards, took on an almost watery appearance through her lenses. It made them less real. Some of the bones were scattered across the road, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like there was anyone else driving. She could dodge them as she pleased.
She owned the road.
She owned the world.
She owned nothing.
Margie didn’t know where she was going; there wasn’t really any point in heading anywhere specific. She blinked to find herself driving down the Nepean Highway, on the way out of Melbourne, towards the south-east. She’d driven there before, of course. Not long after all the power and gas went. She’d driven everywhere soon after it had all stopped for good.
Her hands hadn’t absorbed so much ink then. Her blood had still been hers. Not that that had done her any good. Back then, she’d thought of being another Kayley. Of making the world work. But there’d been no one else to work with.
She’d done the math. Her papers had told her there would be one in 10,000 people left. That meant there would only be around 400 people left in all of Melbourne. Her atlas said Melbourne was 8,806 kilometers squared. More ink had to be absorbed by her skin for this information, but she’d had to know. The polluting of her blood had told her that there was one person per 22 kilometers squared. She rubbed her fingers together. You couldn’t see the stains, but they were there.
Margie drove slowly. “There ain’t no peak hour anymore,” she muttered. Animals, once shy of the roads and the painful deaths they meant, tended to cross whenever they felt like it. Margie had never thought to see large cats roaming the streets of suburbia, but then, her papers had told her that people had campaigned for the zoo animals to be let free.
Free.
What did that mean, exactly?
Free to die from SVHF? Free to roam the streets, starving for lack of food?
It had been crazy. They had been crazy with their ideas. People had died on the side of the road, in their beds, hospitals. People had died on her manicured lawn. Margie had locked her doors, stayed inside. Hoarded the canned food she’d bought out of panic. And look where she was. Alive. And they were all dead.
They were lucky.
She was ‘free’.
What would Kayley do?
****
Margie sat in the front seat of her car. She had the best parking spot, high on a cliff face, staring out at Port Phillip Bay. Its surface barely rippled. It was a mirror, showing the world above it; distorted and yet pure. It held no lies, no illusions. Not like her ink stained hands. They held lies upon lies from all the papers she had touched.
She turned on the radio, randomly flicking channels. She’d wait a few seconds, trying to find a pattern in the chaotic sound, but there was none. Inevitably, she moved on. At first, she’d hated the radio. Couldn’t stand the static. Now it was the only sound she heard, apart from her CDs.
Her fingers hit the dial again, paused at the next former station and moved on.
“Hello—”
Margie froze.
No, it was just her mind.
She dialed the radio back, but there was only static. Maybe it was further? No, she should stop. She was taunting herself. But her fingers — those ink stained liars — moved the dial of their own accord.
“—if anyone can hear me, please keep the radio on.” Margie bit her lip so hard she could taste the tainted copper of blood and ink.
“It’s not real,” she whispered to herself. It had finally happened. She was insane. The ink had done it, filtered through her until it had eaten away at her brain.
“I live in Melbourne, Australia. I survived the plagues. If you’re interested in meeting me, come to Flinders Street Station. I’ll be underneath the clocks at 4:30pm every day.”
Margie’s fingers tightened on the wheel. Her lying fingers. She was insane. This wasn’t real, it wasn’t happening. She was imagining it. She breathed in the scent of the car; the metallic smell of tin cans and the gas bottles she’d raided from a store on her way to the beach.
What if it is true?
****
“You can’t tell me that some survivor (probably male), wouldn’t get it in their head to become some sort of warlord and try to rule their own little bit of land. You know it would happen. Personally, I’d rather band together with people I already know than some random tough guy who has figured out how to rule through strength and fear.”
More words on paper. More ink.
Margie stared at Kayley’s letter, waited for the sentences to burn themselves into her mind. Now, it was more than just ink running through her veins, mixing with her blood. The dream had started again; hope was back.
Part of her, the part of her that knew she was lying to herself, said she should give up. That there was nothing there; it was all a figment of her imagination. That it was all an elaborate ploy by the light and ink to give hope to her withered soul. But the shadowy part, the part that had watched as people died on the streets, said that it was worth it.
So what if the man was one of Kayley’s warlords? Would it really be that bad? Margie knew that she didn’t have much time left. All the words on all her pieces of paper were eating her alive. The diseases may not have killed her, but solitude would.
Margie had to go.
****
She sat staring at Flinders Street Station. It didn’t look how she remembered; the beautiful yellow of the building was stained with rust colored smears and graffiti. Maybe it wasn’t safe to leave the car. Maybe she was being stupid.
Her fingers itched. The ink was telling her to stay.
Margie left the car. I hope he doesn’t have a gun. Guns had been illegal; Australians didn’t have the right to bear arms. But that didn’t mean that they weren’t available. Especially now.
She walked across the road, towards the clocks that were situated under the tower at the station. Most of them were shattered. Crossing over the out of use tram tracks, her eyes rested on the building ahead. Her breath seemed to be coming faster in her chest; dots began dancing in front of her eyes. Ink blots. They’d gotten into her vision.
“Hello,” a deep voice said.
Margie jumped, feeling shaken. Frantically, she looked around. Federation Square with its ugly buildings — a work of art, they’d said, but not to her — the Young and Jackson pub; St Paul’s Cathedral: No one. No, no, no. She really was insane. Tears prickled her eyes, and she felt her hollowness expand; like a maw ready to close.
Margie looked at the top of the stairs, started walking towards them. There was a man-shaped inkblot standing there. Tears welled in her eyes, bleeding the ink from her soul. It had all been an illusion. It wasn’t real, nothing was real. Her hope — the ink — was toying with her mind.
“Whoa, lady, are you all right?”
A strong hand touched her shoulder, and Margie froze. The ink wasn’t physical. Looking up, she gasped. There was a man, with the sun behind him. He was real.
But he didn’t say anything.
“I thought I was insane; that you were a figment of my imagination.”
“I’m real all right,” he said.
He turned her around, towards the station, out of the sun. He had a weathered face, with dark hair and prominent, thick eyebrows. Dark, like ink. But his eyes were safe; they didn’t hold lies, they weren’t blue or red or black. They were brown, honest brown.
Something seemed to bloom within her chest, “I’m not crazy?”
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