Letters from the Apocalypse (Book 1)

by Blake Pitcher

  “What if I fail? What if I don’t return?”

  “You will not fail, and you will return.”

  Roger staggers to his feet, and feels himself sway. Don’t collapse now. This is your golden ticket out of this mess. He lifts Dyne’s spindly arm from his chest and removes the pistol from its side holster. Dyne’s cruel face is frozen in an expression of permanent surprise. You got what you deserved.

  Roger thinks about shooting the White Texan off his horse, but the promise of freedom is too great to risk for such a momentary pleasure. I’d never hit him anyway, he thinks. One thing’s for sure, I’m not coming back.

  Roger looks down at the faded red cross on his chest, and sticks the gun in the waistband of his jeans. Still dizzy, he turns and stumbles off in the direction of the three escapees. He is tense against the trick, the shot that will knock him down from behind. Will it feel like a hot, searing flash? Liquid metal tearing through his spine and out his belly, left to writhe toward the one, true certainty like so many others on the trail from Brownsville?

  But the shot doesn’t come, and Roger clambers and jogs, over bodies and through bushes, putting the White Texan and his army of Enlisted out of sight.

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  I wonder how far ahead they are, Roger thinks as he wades through the river water. He had dared entry into a quiet ranch house, securing the only shirt in his size not stuck to a bloated corpse, along with a bottle of aspirin for his throbbing headache. The side of his head is tender and swollen, but his vision has normalized.

  The bearded man, Saul, had made it seem as if the downtown core wasn’t that far in, but it sure felt like he was putting miles behind him. After crossing under the interstate bridge, he had opted to walk in the water, the only clear path as the bodies and foul odor grew thicker and thicker. Will it keep getting worse right up to the Alamo? Everyone had been trying to get out of the city. And here he is, heading in the wrong direction.

  The people he sees must have died relatively quickly. And without exception, to his eye. Not a sign of life stirs, save the birds. The crows are especially content, gorged and lazy, cawing at him out of obligation.

  The water deepens. Banked under a grove of trees rests a small rowboat with a fishing pole hanging over the side. Roger commandeers the vessel; it’s not like the owner will mind, wherever he or she is decomposing. The rowing saves his legs, which want to separate from his torso and topple over with fatigue.

  “Sure, I’ll come back,” Roger says aloud, as he ponders the White Texan’s decision to let him loose. “You’d like me to bring back a few things? Of course. Just Zulé? How about a little wine and cheese, too?” Roger laughs and crows caw with him.

  I’m losing my mind. Took long enough.

  Everyone is dead in this big old rotting corpse of a city. He could barely row up a pathetic little river, and he was going to traverse thousands of miles north to an indeterminate situation? One step at a time.

  “One stroke at a time,” he giggles as he dips the oars into the water.

  The buildings are higher and the streets are denser. Blisters form on Roger’s palms, an expense of sparing his worn-out legs. Walkways follow the river below street-level, and boats for transporting tourists drift in the passage.

  So this is the Riverwalk. Esther had wanted to visit, but they never had gotten around to it, in favor of saving money for a future that would never happen.

  Roger gives up on his little craft, and pushes it away with a quiet thank you. Oddly, the once tourist-crowded walkways are devoid of bodies. Dark faces of restaurants and waterside pubs glower down and out at Roger as he traverses knocked over café tables and chairs, drooping branches and broken glass.

  Concrete steps take him up to street level, where signs point the way toward the most famous attraction of the city, the revered Alamo. The emptiness is overwhelming. It is as if no human life exists. Roger doubts that the other escaped Penitents would be there. Why would they wait?

  He crosses a cobblestone square leading up to the unimposing, yet hallowed mission. Where long lines of visitors once queued to walk through the hallowed structure, he approaches without obstacle and pauses before the door.

  “Hello?” Roger’s voice is strange to him in an overwhelmingly empty world. The windows of the surrounding hotels watch him warily.

  “It’s Roger. Don’t shoot— I’m coming in.”

  Roger’s eyes struggle to adjust to the dimness inside. He keeps his hands raised just above his shoulders and moves slowly inward.

  “Stay right where you are.” Saul’s voice comes from the shadows in the back. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes.” Roger strains to make out his form.

  “Come forward. Slowly.”

  Roger creeps forward with deliberate movements, holding his hands steady. “It’s okay, they let me go.”

  Cold metal shocks his skin as the cropped woman steps out of the darkness and presses a gun against his head.

  “Were you followed?”

  “No,” says Roger. “Everything’s fine. We’re safe.”

  “Kid, check outside.” Saul emerges from the shadows and steps closer to Roger as Mason peers out the door. “They let you go?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would they do that?” The woman’s voice trembles.

  “I don’t know. The White Texan shot Dyne, and then he told me I could go.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” Saul wrings his hands.

  “I don’t see no one out here,” Mason says from the door.

  “Keep looking,” says the woman.

  “That’s what happened,” Roger says. “You got that girl in here?”

  “Maybe we dumped her in the river.” The woman pushes the gun harder into Roger’s temple. “What do you care?”

  “I don’t know,” says Roger. “I really don’t.”

  Saul pats Roger down, his hands coming to rest on the gun tucked into his waist. He removes the gun and looks it over. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Picked it up on way, along with this fancy shirt I’ve got on. Some aspirin too, if you need some.”

  Saul’s shoulders relax. “Yeah, I could use some. Come, let’s talk.”

  Roger leans against the cool wall, under the looming arches of the old stone mission. Looters have smashed displays and tipped over a large reception desk, but they are gone now, fled or dead, leaving the hallowed space quiet as if enforced by the signs still left on the walls. State flags droop downward—Saul has taken one for a shawl against the coolness—and Roger recognizes it as New York State’s, blue with Liberty and Justice standing above the word “Excelsior.” The motto rings true to Roger, even now, thinking of Esther and the north. True, but also unattainable.

  “So here we are,” Saul says. “By miracle, nonetheless.”

  “I remember my gun having something to do with it,” says the woman.

  Saul ignores the woman, and although he speaks, he is somewhere else, floating. “The hands of the dead pushed that car, to save us. There is a legend of children, who push the cars. They died there.”

  “There are no ghosts, only corpses. And they only care for rotting.”

  “My uncle lived in San Antonio. Years ago, a bus was hit by a train on that road, killing many children. Legend says they move the cars…. I heard them whisper.”

  The woman rolls her eyes; she has heard this several times on the trek into the city. But Mason leans in, listening with large round eyes. “The car, it had to move somehow—I mean, uphill? I believe it.”

  “Fairytales, kid.”

  “Everyone is this city is dead. The sun looks like some kind of pinwheel. And nothing works, not at all. So, yeah I’ll believe a fairytale. The car moved uphill. I heard something too, cold like ghosts. You’re cynical.”

  “I liked you better when you didn’t talk so much, kid.”

  Mason leans back against the wall. “The car moved uphill.”

  “You haven’t said much.”
The woman looks at Roger. “Why don’t you do some talking? I’ve heard all I can stand from these two.”

  “I think we need to concentrate on our next move. Make our way out of this city. Something killed all these people, and whatever it is, I don’t want to catch it.” Roger looks to Saul. “You said you have family in Austin. Two to three days walk. Sounds good to me.”

  “Austin.” Saul scratches his beard as he muses. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No,” Saul’s voice wavers. “I don’t know.”

  “Austin, maybe it’s better there, remember? At least it’s not here, and I’m sure as hell that none of us want to go back there.” Roger looks back to the door as if it might be kicked open by the White Texan at any moment, gun blazing while holding the decapitated head of Dyne by the scalp.

  “We’re screwed,” Saul says. “We’re going to get this disease. How many thousands of bodies do we have to step over to get out of here? Not to mention we’re out of food and water.” Saul staggers to his feet and raises his arms, the flag spreading out behind him, still clutched. “San Antonio is gone. GONE. The whole city. Millions. So what’s the point? March to Austin, and find what? That everyone we know and love is dead?”

  “You’re losing it,” says the woman. “We can’t stay here.”

  Saul lowers his arms, eyes glistening, and trills softly, “Remember the Alamo.”

  The woman sighs heavily and looks to Roger. “It’s you, me and the kid.” She glares at Saul. “You can stay and nut out here, or follow us, or do whatever you want. Roger’s right. We need to get moving.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “What about her?”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s in there,” Saul says, pointing to a small doorway along the far side of the Alamo’s main hall. “Taking a little nap in the sacristy.”

  “We can’t just leave her there.”

  “Yeah, we can,” the woman says.

  “She’ll starve… it’s cruel.”

  The woman’s muscles tense as her eyes narrow. “If you want to play Mr. Good Samaritan, you can go ahead and mercy-kill her. Either that or we’re leaving her here.”

  “But she’s just a child.”

  “She’s the White Texan’s toy doll. And I don’t care much for him or his toys.” The woman’s hand rests on the hilt of her gun, tucked into her waistband. Roger is acutely aware of it, and his own gun, also in his waistband. He wonders if this is what it has come to, a shoot-out in the Alamo.

  “Shoot me first, will you?” Saul twirls his flag. “Don’t shoot the ghost children. They only wanted to help. We’ll all be ghosts, soon.”

  The woman glares at Roger. “Just let you go, did they? Killed Dyne, did he? Don’t hurt the girl—wouldn’t want that. You know what you sound like?”

  Roger shakes his head.

  “A turncoat!” The woman grabs for her gun, and instead of scrambling for his, Roger dives onto the cropped woman grabbing at her arms and attempts to pin her down. She squirms and claws with strength belied by her narrow frame. Teeth sink into Roger’s shoulder and he cries out. His instinct to defend himself is hampered by an ingrained sense of chivalry, the idea that it is wrong to hit a woman with a closed fist.

  She’s on top, and Roger desperately holds on to her wrists, lest she wrest one free, grab her gun and put one through his forehead. In a hail of spitting and biting, kneeing and growling, Roger considers letting go. What was the point? The world was dead and likely Esther too. He had nothing to live for except living itself, a heartless trudge through chaos with an ultimate destination of oblivion. He breathes out and releases his hold on her wrists. Her hand is flying to her weapon, he waits for it; hopes it is quick.

  But she collapses over him, face pressed against his. Warm and sticky, the taste of salt and iron.

  Is it love?

  No. As her head lolls away, Mason stands above holding a stanchion with both hands. Roger pushes her off, sits up in a clearing haze. She’s motionless on the stone floor, face down with blood pooling from a nasty gash on the back of her head.

  “Thanks?” Roger wipes blood and spit from his face. “You might as well bash me too.”

  “Is she dead?” Mason is white-faced.

  “I don’t care whether she is or not.” Roger pulls himself to his feet. “And neither should you.”

  “I didn’t want to kill her.”

  Saul is oddly serene. He kneels down next to the woman and drapes his flag over her body. “We’ll all be dead, soon.”

  Roger picks up her gun and hands it to Mason. “You’ll need this. Stick with him, or not. I think it’s better not to be alone. Get out of here and keep moving.”

  “You’re not coming with us?”

  “Our companionship has ended.”

  Chapter 17: A Ghost

  Zulé lies bound in the sacristy amid the broken glass from a smashed display case. Her open, blue eyes contrast against her brown expressionless face, gangly arms pulled back and tied with cords over the sleeves of her western-style shirt, same with the feet, unforgiving knots cutting off circulation to the extremities.

  Roger surveys her condition—a bruise here, a scuff there; she has not been treated kindly, but she is intact. He first removes the cloth stuffed in her mouth, but she only stares. A shard of glass serves as a knife to cut her bonds. Ginger sawing takes time but avoids slicing into her child’s skin.

  “Can you walk?”

  Zulé struggles to sit up with numbed arms and legs. Her cracked lips stick together as she fails to respond.

  “Let’s see what we can do.” Roger rubs her wrists, then her ankles, trying to move blood back into her hands and feet. He tips his canteen to her lips, and she drinks some, water dribbling down her chin. Her sips grow stronger as she takes in more and more water.

  “Easy does it,” says Roger. “Drinking too fast isn’t good when you’re dehydrated. Or something like that. I don’t know.”

  Roger supports her as she takes wavering steps through the doorway and into the main chamber. The woman on the floor groans and shifts as they pass by, still alive after the hit to the head.

  “Run turncoat,” she says, “I’m gonna kill you, turncoat.” She attempts to pull herself to her knees, but fails, crumpling back down. Roger hurries Zulé out into the courtyard where the moon shines above, and the world is more earthly in the absence of the alien sun.

  “What do you want?”

  Zulé stares back at him emptily.

  “Dumb question, I know.” Roger feels heavy. “What is left to want?”

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  The sun twinkles over the horizon, and Roger is at a loss of what action to take. He meanders about the Alamo plaza holding Zulé’s hand. A small convenience store still has a few sealed items, a bag of popcorn and some candy; it’s not a time to be particular. Roger realizes he doesn’t know which way is north, much less where the White Texan might be. Higher ground, Roger thinks as he gazes upward. A bird’s-eye view is what I need.

  A flatiron building rises above the structures surrounding the plaza, topped with a large steeple. Roger stands before the awning that reads “The Emily Morgan Hotel.” Above, the gothic structure rises, adorned with crowned faces and leering gargoyles contorted in different forms of agony.

  “Looks welcoming. What do you think?” He asks the silent Zulé. “No opinion? That’s what I thought.”

  The air in the hotel’s stairwell is thick and musty, but not unbearable. Ascent is the placing of one foot above the other, and Roger steps carefully and quietly. He doesn’t speak for fear of being heard, although his heavy breathing and plodding footfalls echo. Zulé follows, wobbly on her legs like a young foal, but keeps up dependably. She still hasn’t spoken, but that’s alright with Roger at the moment, passing by level after level of rooms of unknown inhabitance.

  Roger catches his breath as he leans on a handrail. “That makes nine floors. Counted thi
rteen from outside, plus the steeple.”

  Zulé looks at her feet and flexes her toes.

  “Hanging in there?” Roger waits a moment, not expecting an answer, and not receiving one.

  Zulé’s head jerks up, blue eyes straining at the open space above.

  “What the hell?” Roger draws his gun. It strikes him how accustomed he has become to relying on it in such a short time. “What was that?”

  Zulé points.

  “I don’t see anything.” Roger squints. “Heard something though. Sounded like a metal cart.”

  Roger creeps up the steps toward the tenth floor landing. Unlike the others, the door to the hallway is partially open and he can see down it by angling his head to the side. The corridor is empty, save for a laundry cart at the far end and the numbered doors that stretch down to it. A gentle touch from behind almost sends him reeling, but he restrains himself with great effort.

  “I told you to wait down there.”

  Zulé shakes her head and holds onto his shirttail.

  “Let’s just keep moving past here. We’re almost to the top.”

  The two are halfway up the next flight when the door to level ten below clicks shut.

  “Run!” Roger sprints up the steps, pulling Zulé along, who has difficulty keeping up. He hoists her onto his back and completes the next two flights powered by fear and adrenaline. He reaches the entrance to the steeple and jogs up the final curving stairway on fumes, collapsing in a small, dusty room overlooking the city. He gasps on the floor, keeping a ready hand on the gun and watching the stairwell. Minutes tick away before he is finally able to sit up and speak.

  “Am I losing my mind?”

  Zulé doesn’t answer, of course.

  I think I am.

  The sun is low and rising above the city as Roger looks out. To the east, west and north, San Antonio is a model city, tiny houses and cars in absolute stillness, as if waiting to be populated. The only movement is that of the tops of trees swaying in a gentle breeze and the glimmering of distorted sunlight on the glass of the few tall buildings that rise above. A pit forms in Roger’s stomach at the vastness of the space, a city sprawling out in all directions.