by Riley Flynn
It wasn’t a proper island. There was water on three sides, roughly twenty feet from bank to bank. But the other side was a grassy stretch of ground. It sunk slightly, in the middle, a concave impression in the earth which must have dropped some ten feet at the center with trees lined up all above. There was a picnic area in the middle with a barbeque pit.
They had to hold tight as they rolled the bikes down the hill into the belly of the island. Down in here, they’d be invisible from up above. The halo of trees up above stretched together and almost touched, a canopy above them. There was a hole left in the middle for escaping smoke or demons. It was perfectly secluded.
Setting up the tent had become a ritual. It was easy enough. Designed to hold three people, it slept the two of them more than comfortably. Timmy had invested in a fold-out model, which meant it could be erected with little more than a flick of the wrist. Pulling it down and putting it back in the bag was more difficult, as was fixing the guidelines and pegs in place. After a few days on the road, however, they had the method down to a fine art.
Each time Alex hammered a peg into place, he felt his back protest. That bat had done some damage, even through the Kevlar. But he didn’t want to complain, didn’t want to leave too much to Timmy. The one-time Lord of Castle Ratz, who rarely had trouble finding any words, had gone quiet. Even the discovery of the beer crate hadn’t been enough to shake him into a smile.
For the first time on the journey, they started a fire. It wasn’t big. Barely larger than a manhole cover. It wasn’t warm. It was hardly enough to heat up the meals they pulled off the bikes. But it was welcome nonetheless. Starting a fire made this seem like a road trip. Something from the movies. A different kind of escape.
There was no power in this town, whatever it was called. No lights came on in the dark. No gentle hum of an electronic device droning in the distance. Occasionally, one of the men climbed the incline to the top of the island and looked out. There was never anyone there.
So they sat and drank beer. The conversation was stilted. Alex had hung his leather jacket from the handlebars of his bike, the bullet hole flashing the chrome piping through the black leather. Occasionally, he’d reach up and rub his finger on the metal, hearing the slight squeak.
The body armor hung next to it. The material inside was self-healing, said Timmy. It repaired itself. Feeling the bruise on his back, Alex hoped the armor healed faster than he did. He looked at the bullet hole in the jacket again, obsessing.
“That was close.”
“Uh-huh.” Timmy was on his third beer already. “Pretty close.”
They had checked the bruising on Alex’s back. There was one blooming purple rose, the size of on apple, right where the bullet would have hit. Almost exactly on top of that, there was a thick line of darkened flesh, right where the bat had caught him. It had been up to Timmy to describe the injuries to his friend.
“You ever seen anything like this bruising? MMA or whatever? I’ve never had anything this bad. Hurts like hell, still.”
“Nothing like that. Paintballs can be sore if they get you. Not like this, though.”
“You okay, Timmy?”
“I’m fine. Just feeling a bit…you know, not quite with it. Bit sick.”
“It’s been a long day. A long couple of days.”
“Yeah.”
“You want another beer?”
“I might. Think I’m going to have to turn in soon. I’m exhausted.”
“Sure thing. Hey, again. Thanks. For today. For everything. You saved me, Timmy.”
For the first time in hours, Timmy raised his head up from the ground and locked gazes with Alex. His eyes were bloodshot, bags beneath beginning to sag with all the weight in the world. He’d never looked so rough and weary.
“It’s nothing, man. We gotta stick together. Who knows what’s happening in the world?”
“I know, I know. Wasn’t too long ago we were running around in that warehouse, you know?”
“Yeah, man.”
“And there was that guy – what’s his name, guy with the belly?”
“Freddy.”
“Yeah, Freddy. Had me in that arm lock. Remember that?”
“Yeah, I remember. You got him.”
“I got him.” Alex nodded. “But then you got me out of a jam afterwards. Another one. Where would I be without you?”
“Detroit, probably.”
“Was that a joke?”
Finally, Timmy stole a smile. “Not as much of a joke as you with Freddy. He was going to beat the crap out of you. All seven shades.”
“He’s a big guy.”
“He’s a pussycat.”
More beers were opened. The fire began to die. Trips up the hill to check on the town became less frequent. Trips to the tree line for a water break became more common. As the glass bottles piled up beside the tent, the atmosphere began to unwind.
It was tiring, being so long on the road. Alex couldn’t remember a point in his life where he’d wanted so much to just collapse onto his sofa and do absolutely nothing for an entire weekend. Just tune everything out. But the world was turning. The night was becoming the day. There was no rest for the wicked.
Finally, the tent seemed too appealing. Allowing themselves to fall to their exhaustions, the men crawled inside. As ever, they left the door open and let the stars inside. They’d be woken up at dawn when the sun rolled across their faces.
Perhaps it was the beer, but Alex found it hard to sleep. Staring upwards, imagining the people for thousands of years who’d done exactly the same, he was restless. Toes itching. Mind racing. Falling asleep wasn’t easy anymore.
It seemed easier for Timmy. Alex lay there, counting the heavenly bodies over and over and losing count. His friend had his eyes closed tight, his head turning this way and that, living out his dreams.
Like oil in water, the dreams rose to the surface. Timmy would sit bolt upright, flustered and sweating. Speaking something only his dreams knew how to translate. Whimpering. Thrashing around. It was a lot to share a tent with but it calmed down each time.
Alex watched his friend a while longer. Sometimes shivering, sometimes still. The fight earlier had affected him. Why hadn’t it affected Alex in the same way? As Timmy’s sleeping mind continued to torture itself, Alex tried to solve the riddle. But it was impossible.
Eventually, he fell asleep without an answer. There were no dreams for him, nothing to soothe his sleeping mind. Only the stars and their empty space.
23
The next morning, Alex woke with the warmth of the sun inching up his face. There were no clouds in the sky, nothing to hold back the light. Trying his eyes, Alex could see up through the chimney hole in the circle of trees and remembered where he was. This happened every morning. The sudden awareness of everything that had happened.
Turning over, preparing to pick himself up out of the sleeping bag, Alex reached out to his friend. Timmy would sleep through the end of days, he was discovering. They had been friends for a few years, but it was the tiny details that they were beginning to discover about one another that only became clear when spending every waking second together.
Timmy had been shocked when Alex brushed his teeth before eating, for example. It was a ritual, the way Alex knew it, the way he’d done it for years. Timmy thought it was weird. One of them was an early riser, one was not. These miniscule discoveries about one another went on and on, occurring at the strangest times.
Shaking his friend’s leg, yawning as he did so, Alex began to rise.
“Come on, buddy, time to get up and going. About halfway there, I reckon. Few more days and we’ll be sipping cold ones on the porch.”
The sleeping bag was damp. Wet and heavy. Timmy didn’t answer. Looking out of the tent, searching for rain clouds, Alex wondered how they’d been caught with water. But the material was warm as well. Alex was bone dry.
Still no sound from the sleeping man. Turning into the tent, Alex rattled the leg again.
Then an arm. Timmy wasn’t waking up. Crawling back inside, perched upon his elbows, Alex got a good look at his friend’s face. It was pale. Coated in a fine film of sweat. The whole body shivered.
Sick.
Immediately, Alex leapt from the tent. Outside, by the bikes, he searched for water. They had the bottles. Cannisters. Metal and filled with spring water. He took it back to the tent and dribbled a drop on Timmy’s forehead. No reaction.
Taking hold of the feet, of the ankles, Alex tried to pull Timmy out of the tent. In the open, with a great deal of effort, he propped the unconscious man up against one of the bikes. With the other sleeping bag, he covered him up. And then uncovered him. Should he be cold or warm in this situation? What kind of sick was he?
The water again. Nothing. With a lot of labor, Timmy breathed, at least. Could be food poisoning, Alex thought—hoped, something in those beers we drank. But that would have affected both of them. They’d done everything together for the last few days. If Timmy was falling ill, then Alex couldn’t be far behind.
Racking his brains, Alex tried to uncover any kind of medical training he’d ever received. He’d learned CPR for a factory job. Didn’t really help here. He’d spent many lonely weekends watching medical shows on a couch in a crappy apartment. They hadn’t covered this kind of situation.
When he’d had the flu as a kid, his mother had worked her magic. But it had been exactly that: magic. She’d been a miracle worker. The best nurse a boy could hope for. That wasn’t the kind of care Timmy needed. Had she done anything specific? Alex had been burning up one day, running a fever. She’d put a cold compress on his head. That might work.
From inside one of the bags, Alex found one of his T-shirts. He crunched it up into a ball and poured water out over it. That was about as cold as he could get anything. It was a warm September morning. It would have to do.
Taking the wet cloth, he applied it to Timmy’s forehead. The shoulders sagged, satisfied. At least, that was what Alex thought. The eyes tremored. So cold worked better. He was suffering a fever. Tugging at the sleeping bag, removing Timmy’s shirt, Alex tried to lower his friend’s temperature.
Every move seemed to bring Timmy back closer to the land of the living. Alex re-wet the compress, reapplied to the forehead. A pair of eyes opened up, bloodshot and in pain.
“What’s happening?” said a voice, arriving from three worlds away.
“You’re burning up. I have to cool you down.”
“Something don’t feel right.” Timmy was shivering but still sweating.
“It doesn’t look right, either. You’re sick, Timmy, we’ve got to fix it.”
Alex knew they had to fix it. Travelling to Virginia alone wasn’t good enough. Timmy had taken him this far, had poked him hard enough in the side that he’d rumbled awake from a five-year slumber. There was no way he could be sick. Without him, Alex would probably still be lying on his couch, waiting for the mob or the police or the germs to rush up through his windows and take him away.
“We got to get you some medicine. Something. Anything.”
A mumbled response. Nothing specific. There was nothing packed on the bikes for this. They had medical kits, sure. But they were for dressing wounds. Stitches. Maybe some painkillers at a push. Alex checked anyway. Taking the tablets, he handed them to his friend.
“These things, Timmy. I don’t know what they are. But I don’t know what you have. So they’re probably just going to ease the pain a bit. Does it hurt?”
“Every…. Everything hurts, man. The whole l-l-lot. Give them to me.”
The pills washed down the throat, got caught halfway, and it took three big gulps of water to get them to shift.
“Timmy, do you know anything about this? What should I do?”
Another mumble. A hand raised up, just above a sitting leg, and then fell back down. Timmy was unconscious again, shivering again. There would be no help from the victim. Alex would have to handle this himself.
The drug store. It had been untouched yesterday. Practically the only door in town which hadn’t been opened. Maybe there was something inside. Flu medicine. Something for temperatures. At the very least, more painkillers. Maybe they had a pamphlet on what to do in situations like this. There are no situations like this, Alex knew, but they had pamphlets for everything.
In a rush, Alex folded up the tent. He took the keys from both motorcycles, found the lockpicks in the bags, and propped up Timmy in a safe place. He placed plenty of water around his friend, right next to the two sleeping bags. If he woke up hot or cold, he could deal with it. It wouldn’t take long to rush to the drug store.
Picking the right gun was always Timmy’s job. They had pistols, rifles, and some bigger pieces with them. It was time to go big. No fooling around. The AR-15 might even help with the break in. It was going to have to be a break in, Alex knew by now. That medicine was essential.
It hurt to leave Timmy behind like this. Standing at the base of the slope, about to run up the hill and make his way into the town, Alex could see his friend. Still asleep. Better that way. That pale skin was the worry. Pale, not gray. For now. And those eyes. Bloodshot. But not as bad as the others. Please, Alex prayed, not like the others. This was just some bug, something they’d picked up on the road.
It had to be.
Once at the top of the slope, Alex began to walk toward the town. The rifle slung across his back, he ducked low. It was five minutes to the bottom end of the high street when walking on foot. But it took longer. Ducking, weaving, pausing behind every available barricade, Alex worried. There had been no one in the town yesterday. Didn’t mean it was empty today.
On foot, the world was different. Perched up on the bike, pistol at his hip and cohort by his side, riding through the town had felt intriguing. There were fewer threats, more opportunities. Without the bike, without his friend, the town seemed a very different place.
The southernmost point of the main street stared directly north, right up to the chapel positioned at the end. The drug store was the biggest building at the far end of the street, which was perhaps half a mile long. That meant having to get to the other end of the road without encountering anyone.
From this position, Alex found it easier to get a better reading of the geography. From the bike, everything had passed by fast, without much time for inspection. Now, looking, Alex could see that there were more stores than he remembered. More doorways. A few of them were fitted with the white crosses.
There were still no people. They might be inside the buildings. If he had been crouched inside a home and a pair of heavy motorbikes ambled down a street, Alex appreciated that he might not have sprung out and introduced himself. The ghosts of this town might still be around.
Checking the rifle, Alex crept from one doorway to the next. A slow process. Standing in the shadows, listening intently. Watching everything along the street. Trying every handle, seeing that a few gave way. No time to go inside. The only ones Alex did not touch were the homes with the white crosses.
It took twenty minutes. About halfway down the street, Alex noticed something. There were no birds. No dawn chorus or steady songs throughout the day. No flapping of wings or gatherings of crows on gutters, cackling to themselves. It’s why the town seemed so strange, he thought, it sounded different.
A noise. A rustle. Alex raised the gun. Aimed it at an alley. Closed one eye. Held his breath. A rat ran out into the street. The gun lowered. The lungs relaxed. Alex continued up the street.
There’s an age old human sense, the feeling of being watched. Alex knew it well. Anyone in a city who’s waited for buses on cold nights has felt it. But this was an opposite sensation. A longing for another person’s gaze. The feeling of wanting to be watched, if only because it would be a sign of humanity in an increasingly alien world. He considered the idea as the rat ran away down the street.
At last, Alex found himself outside the drug store. It wasn’t just the door, as they’d tried yesterday, or th
e frosted glass. There was something else about this place which stirred the senses. Every other building had been broken into. Not this place. It was off limits. Sacred.
But not for everyone. The door had stayed locked. Looking closer, Alex tried to stare through the keyhole. It was too tight to see anything. But the picks might be able to open it up. They belonged to Timmy, wrapped up in a leather case lined with velvet. Expensive, apparently. A collection of thin crooked hooks cast in steel.
Selecting one which seemed the right size, Alex inserted it into the lock. He had no idea what he was doing. When they had packed the bags, Timmy had tried to explain the procedure. Now he was burning up, propped against a bike with an unexplained fever. The picks did nothing.
Using his shoulder, Alex hit hard against the door. Again, and a third time. It didn’t budge. He tried to kick it. There was a sound from behind, something moving. Maybe it was having an effect. Twisting to face the door of the drug store, he tried again with his shoulder. This time, he took a run up.
Only four steps. Picking up a bit of speed, Alex ran, aiming his shoulder for the spot just above the lock. He focused, staring intently at the target. Before he reached the door, he jumped, lifting himself up off the ground and transforming into a flying battering ram.
Just as he was about to make contact, Alex closed his eyes. It was going to hit hard. It might even break the wood. He had to watch out for splinters. Scrunching up his face, he anticipated the contact. But it never came. Instead, Alex flew through an empty space, plunging deeper into the darkness. The door was not there.
Even before it hit him, Alex knew the floor was next. It wasn’t an easy fall. Tumbling, he scuffed and rode along a tiled surface. As he opened his eyes, trying to discover what had gone wrong, Alex heard footsteps. There was a sharp edge pressed up against his neck.
At last, he opened his eyes. It was a woman. She wasn’t happy.