by Aiden Bates
Greg does a pretty dramatic head-turn as they walk down the twilight driveway and onto the quiet, tree-crowded road. They couldn’t see their way through the woods right now. Even the street lights are almost too far in between to be safe, but on smooth roads they can manage it. They walk back into shadow as Greg processes this request. Sam only waits.
“It’s not for me, is it? Because it’s kind of too late, now that me and Kevin have worked something out. It’s not for me. Right?”
“Right. It’s sort of for Clarkie, sort of, because I barely know the kid, I’m not even planning anything specific, and it’s not like I’m happy to spawn with him but not with you, it’s not that.”
“Nice word for it, spawn,” Greg says with a snort.
“You know what I mean. What you proposed to me a few days ago, I wasn’t at all equipped for, literally. Even now, I’m only doing this because I feel like the rest of my life is a long time underground, I just feel like someday I might want what you’re already sure about, what Kevin and Glenn have always been sure about, and the world being what it is, I’ve got to fix this right now if I don’t want to break my own heart somewhere down the road.”
They lapse into silence as they continue on down this literal road. Greg says nothing more, so eventually Sam keeps going.
“I figured you would understand my need for this the most, and I also wanted to tell you first because, you know, you came to me first a few days ago, and it just seemed like the right way to go about it. What do you say? What are you thinking?”
“I’ll take your chores,” Greg says, sounding casual about it. “Anything for a friend.”
“Goddammit, Greg,” Sam says, stopping in his tracks and reaching for Greg’s shoulder, to make him stop too. They can barely see the outline of each other in the darkness, but Sam can feel how pliant Greg is, how willing to come towards him, so he pulls Greg into a hug. That’s when he can feel wetness—tears—on Greg’s face.
“I’m not mad at you, I’m not heartbroken or anything, I swear,” Greg says, when Sam makes a cooing noise and holds him tight. “I’m not sad because you rejected me or anything. Honestly, I like that I’m finally going to be a part of Glenn’s family, I would have asked him and Kevin first, I just thought they’d for sure say no and I couldn’t take the rejection from their perfect family, it would have been too much. I’m just sad because … the path we’re on is so narrow. All the other things we could have done, could have been, all of those realities are shutting down. It’s not just the present that’s fading, it’s every future we’ve ever imagined. I mean, I know that all of life is just a narrowing of possibilities, but this is just so clear and so sudden, you know?”
Sam is kissing Greg’s cheek, tasting his tears, and rocking him back and forth to comfort him.
“I love you, Greg, and I know what you mean, and I love you, so much, I can’t even be sorry that we’re all going to be crammed together forever. All the places I’ve gone have meant nothing to me, except for the people I’ve met, and I haven’t met people like you guys, like us, in years. This group is literally everything to me.”
“Thanks, you’re sweet to say so,” Greg says, snuffling up and reaching first for his hair to make sure it’s still in proper place even in the dark.
“Gorgeous Greg,” Sam calls him, and they sigh, and laugh a bit, and then turn home.
“So does Clarkie know about this yet? He didn’t seem like he was baby crazy or anything.”
“Nah, I’ll tell him about it tomorrow morning so he’s not surprised by the state of me when I get back. He or you will have to come get me I’m sure, somebody will need to drive, they won’t let me drive home myself or take a cab, I bet.”
“Like it matters now,” Greg says.
“Yeah, really. But like I said, this isn’t a sure thing, I’m just trying to turn the possibility back on. Clarkie’s practically an infant to me. I don’t usually date so young, and for a long time it was just easier to screw older, good for my career even, good for meeting people with more experience and connections, and good for finding people who knew their way around a dick, too.”
“True that,” Greg agrees. He’s done his fair share of dating too, all on a mission that has come suddenly to naught, just like Sam’s. Greg has no husband and Sam no career after Sunday, and yet neither of them is all that sad about it. Somehow they each got what they really wanted, thwarted though they were in how they thought it would happen.
“Clarkie may not want kids, I may not want kids when it comes down to it, we may not have enough food for more people, or maybe the surgery won’t even take, who knows? I just can’t leave this undone.”
“I know the feeling. I’m going to get with Kevin before Sunday; Glenn and I and presumably Kevin too have agreed to that. Now’s the time. There is no more time to wait around.”
Sam nods in the dark. Tomorrow is Friday; there is no more time to wait.
12. Clarkie Joins the Group
Clarkie wakes up to find Sam moving around, getting dressed in the dark much earlier than he needs to be for breakfast. Clarkie’s known that Sam’s had something brewing in his head since he took that walk with Greg, but he hasn’t asked. He never asked Alex a lot of questions either—the more you ask the more you end up telling in return, and Clarkie’s got secrets.
“Oh, hey, you’re awake,” Sam says when he notices Clarkie’s open eyes. “I have something to tell you.”
“Sunrise turns you on?” Clarkie guesses facetiously. He doesn’t want to guess anything he suspects: You and Greg have always been secretly in love and are following your hearts; you and Greg have changed your minds about surviving, you just want to take off into the sunrise and never look back; you’ve got some big, stupid idea you ran by Greg first like a quickie marriage or some other meaningless trifle, meaning that you’re the childish one between us, the one who doesn’t really get what the end of the world means. Clarkie doesn’t guess any of that because he doesn’t want to hear it. It turns out he’s actually pretty close with the last silent guess.
“I don’t think I mentioned it to you, but I got a vasectomy a few years ago, basically the second I started making money from acting.” Sam sits on the edge of the bed and Clarkie sits up to drape his arms over Sam’s shoulders, over his shirt since he’s now fully dressed, and he starts kissing the rough stubble on his neck. He didn’t bother to shave this morning. He’ll have a pretty grand beard to go along with that mustache if they survive a while. “I want to get it reversed before we go underground. It’s not that I want kids, and I’m not telling you assuming you want kids, but I want the option in case I can make up my mind someday, and today’s pretty much the last day, isn’t it? It’s Friday. Tomorrow we move.”
Clarkie nods against Sam’s shoulder. The guy really does believe they’ll make it if he’s willing to undergo a surgery that means he can’t have sex one last time before the world burns down. He’s no Nero with a fiddle, is he? He just assumes he’ll have time to recover.
Clarkie has not once been sure of that. These people aren’t the only ones anxious to live, Alex was too, for a while. When he found Clarkie in town, he was up to his ass in plans to survive this catastrophe. He too was doing supply runs, and he was even a step ahead of all his friends since he had so much more time to think about it; Alex found a bunker he was outfitting with the supplies he was supposed to be making a guest house out of. Clarkie wonders if Kevin knows about that place, or if he’s just spinning lies for his friends so they can all live with hope before they die. Alex debated that with himself too, whether he should tell people or not tell, lie or not lie, live or die. He was on his own personal rollercoaster the days before he died, thinking he was the only one who really knew. Sure Clarkie had heard him talk about it and said he believed it, but Clarkie was just a kid, right? And the young always think they’ll live forever.
Well, not Clarkie. He’s no stranger to telling lies to his friends either, he’s certainly been lying to Alex’s pretty easily.
Clarkie wasn’t some drop-out Pilates instructor loafing around with his cousin, if he was that he’d have been out of this den of crazy people before the funeral, onto the next sugar daddy or whatever.
Clarkie’s cousin in town is indeed his cousin, but his cousin’s a drug dealer, a job he inherited from his parents, and Clarkie and him are close because Clarkie’s parents were addicts. Not addicts like Sam thinks he’s an addict, out of boredom and ennui, but addicts like the kind who forget to feed their kid. Clarkie and his cousin are still trauma bonded over growing up with those people, but they can’t live together very long before they start repeating old patterns, especially considering the kind of clientele his cuz cultivates. Clarkie’s yet to try anything harder than cocaine, but he figured it was only a matter of time before he and his cousin became the previous generation all over again. Talk about kids … Clarkie had thought about having kids, for sure. He had decided long ago that he wasn’t going to perpetuate his shit bloodline, and his cousin agreed to the same. So far they’ve both been successful, but like Sam points out a lot, Clarkie’s still so young. There was plenty of time for him to fuck everything up before the news came that the world was coming down, and when it came, Clarkie was glad to hear it. These friends of Alex’s, they first wondered why Clarkie would shack up with their sad friend so easily, and even now they still wonder why he believed Alex’s story so readily, with way less proof than they had through Kevin’s connections. The answer is pretty simple: Clarkie not only knows how easily human beings can choose to destroy themselves, he was also happy to greet the end of the world. Good, he thought, fuck it. Burn this piece of shit to the ground.
That’s what he was happy to think when it was just him and restless Alex against the towering power of ignorance and government (same difference to both of them). He was fine with that guy for the rest of forever since forever was so short suddenly. He thought Alex was prepared for the same mini-commitment, he said it often enough, that he was so grateful he didn’t have to knowingly die alone. And yet still he chose to die alone and to leave Clarkie to die alone for all he knew. It turns out that Clarkie has been folded into Alex’s chosen family, but he couldn’t possibly have predicted all this, could he?
So now Clarkie is looking at spending the rest of forever with Sam, however long or short it may be, and Sam is betting on a long forever. Would any amount of time underground be long enough for Clarkie to break his promise to himself and the future that he wouldn’t have kids? Well, probably.
Because like Sam points out, there will be no street drugs underground. And also like Sam points out, this is a whole new world. Sam didn’t want kids in the old world at all; he wouldn’t have been suited for it, he wouldn’t have done it right, and like a true prince of a man, he did the responsible thing and snipped himself. If you’re not man enough to be a father, you can be man enough to commit to your choices. Clarkie likes that. It’s more than what he and his cousin ever did to put actions behind their words; they never did anything to make sure their recreational sex encounters never turned into procreation. And so now both Sam and Clarkie are faced with a whole new choice: is it you yourself who isn’t good enough for children, or is it the world you live in? Because the world is changing, and you might well surprise yourself.
“Do you think this is weird, do you want me to not even bother?” Sam asks. “Maybe you have some dangerous condition where if you get pregnant for even a second you’ll die or something, those exist, don’t they?”
Clarkie scoffs and smiles. “I don’t know, but I don’t have any such thing. I won’t tell you what to do, Sam; your body, your choice, right?”
“Yeah, but what I do to my body might really affect yours if I knock you up, you know? If you don’t want that to even be an option, maybe it’s better not to go through all this trouble, you know? It was just Greg’s announcement the other night that got me thinking about it. Now’s the time to act if I’m going to, so am I going to?”
Unlike Alex, Sam isn’t just asking himself this, just thinking out loud. Alex would have whole Q&As with himself out loud, and the first few times Clarkie answered him, not understanding that this was just how Alex parsed his thoughts. Alex waved him away like Clarkie was interrupting his private, solo conversation, so Clarkie stopped suggesting anything, just stayed quiet and watched him like a TV show, the same way he quietly observed Alex’s friends when they speculated about why he’d kill himself. They weren’t asking Clarkie either, though Clarkie knew more about the truth behind Alex’s reasoning better than all of them. They were asking the universe, and Alex’s spirit, and themselves in a philosophical college-y sort of exercise to better discover the motivations of themselves or some shit. Clarkie doesn’t know because he’s not a college drop-out like he told Alex, he barely finished high school and certainly never got into a college. Not that he felt that was such a big tragedy because even now he’s surrounded by educated fools, isn’t he?
But the fool in front of him now, the fool that’s been sharing his bed for a few days, that fool is asking Clarkie a question. He’s not like Alex or the rest of them, not that those people are so bad, but they have overlooked Clarkie like he was the idiot among them (nope, the opposite was true), except for Sam. Even before everyone got the bad news of the apocalypse, Sam was more attentive to him than the rest, asking about him after the funeral, asking him questions he actually sought answers to. He must have been the smartest one back at school, he’s the most earnestly inquisitive.
Clarkie kisses Sam and Sam’s mustache since it’s hard to do one without the other. He kisses him good and deep and feels him start to turn on. He stops short of starting something he’s not sure they can go through with, medically, considering what Sam’s about to go do, what Clarkie thinks he should go do, for both of them.
“Do it, Sam. I think it’s a good idea. I think you’re a prince for asking me about it.”
Sam smiles, happy to have been told he did a good job. Actors, wow, Clarkie thinks; somebody’s needy for praise and attention.
“So you do think you might want kids someday? You think someday you and me,” he breaks to giggle a bit at the thought—so silly and yet so appealing—“you and me, we might look around the bunker and think, Honey, let’s start a family, really?”
“I mean, I hope we don’t start in with pet names like that, but stranger things can happen, clearly. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.” Not anymore at least, for both of them; once a conception would have been a disaster for them each, but not now, and possibly not ever again if they stay lucky. “I think it’ll be nice to have a choice if we can.”
Sam kisses him then, in agreement or in gratitude Clarkie doesn’t know, and now Clarkie cups his dick and asks, “Would it be a good idea for you to get one off before you go in for surgery?”
“Actually, yes, it’s even recommended. I can’t eat or drink anything but it’s better to walk in there empty and relaxed.”
“Can’t eat anything? Poor you. Good thing that rule doesn’t apply to me,” Clarkie says, before sliding off the bed onto his knees so he can suck Sam off under dawn’s early light. Sam’s fingers twist in Clarkie’s hair while he does it, half swallowing Sam the way almost no guy doesn’t like, a particularly convenient absent gag reflex that Sam hasn’t gotten to experience with Clarkie before. He finishes quickly, just a moment before Greg comes tapping quietly at their door to tell Sam he’s ready whenever Sam is, or maybe that timing is no coincidence at all; maybe Greg gathered what they were up to and waited to hear Sam finish before knocking, like a gentleman.
“Let’s get going, Sam, time is of the essence,” Greg says. Clarkie snorts at the word essence and gets up, thinking he’ll just make himself busy while Sam and Greg talk, but Sam doesn’t want to see him turn away just yet. He closes up his pants and comes after Clarkie, turns him around for a big kiss.
“I’ll see you tonight, kiddo. I think I love you already, do you believe that?”
Clarkie tr
ies to smile, but stops halfway through because a full smile would crack open his face and start him crying.
“I believe it,” is all he says, as perfunctorily as possible, kissing Sam quickly and then turning towards the bathroom fast. “Drive safe, you two, see ya later.” He hardly knows what he’s saying as he shuts the door, he’s too busy pulling down the mirror and getting something out of the hole behind it. He’s got an important task today, too, suddenly.
This hole in the wall should have been for a medicine cabinet mirror, but Alex never got around to buying one. He was using his money and some of Glenn and Kevin’s (just the purchases that would make sense when they checked the credit card statements so Alex would appear to be busy at the job they’d asked him to do) to outfit a bunker for himself and the people who would believe him when the time came. He often wondered, and worried, how the hell he’d get all his friends to suddenly show up here in time and get serious about surviving, and in a way he did it, he just isn’t around to join them all. Martyr Alex, right? His death saved everyone he loved and who loved him enough to drop everything to come mourn him. Clarkie does start sniveling when he thinks of it like that, and wonders if Alex didn’t plan that, didn’t think of it. He might have killed himself hoping it would all end like this. Clarkie has to sit down for a minute on the toilet’s lid to wipe his eyes and blow his nose and collect himself before he takes what he has to Kevin. He maybe didn’t know Alex at all compared to these friends of his, but Clarkie misses him all the same, there’s no helping that.
What Clarkie has from behind the mirror is a map to the place Alex was outfitting, some mining compound in a mountain in New York state, and the schematics he was using to outfit the place for off-the-grid human living. Human powered generators (the survivors will stay fit if they want light to see by), and water and urine purification systems (can’t waste what you’ve got, which will be plenty of waste), communication devices for the outside world in case there’s a world still around to reach for rescue or to hear the news of the state of the surface (will any part of it ever be safe again?). Clarkie didn’t show these things to Kevin before now because he didn’t believe it. He’s never seen this place, for all he knows Alex was just doodling his fantasy bunker on these pages, but besides that, he never once thought Alex would make it, nor his friends, not with Kevin on the job either. Clarkie just figured it was a lot of fuss for nothing, so why bother? But now … goddamn Sam goddamn got to him. If that jaded, mustachioed, pill-popping TV actor never-was (forget has-been) can believe in the future, Clarkie’s going to try too, fuck it. It’s not like he’ll have time to be disappointed if it all goes south, he’ll be too busy being dead.