The garbage cans had done well in capturing a couple gallons of rainwater the evening before, though, he wanted to gather more next time, and he had a plan. He strained the rainwater through an old t-shirt into a stockpot hanging on a hook over the flame. He let it boil for several minutes, then cool, pouring the remains into several fold-a-carriers and spent water bottles.
When he was finished, he had five gallons of purified water, as well as one set to the side for bathing.
As the last pot came to a boil, Emily woke, her cries stabbing through the silence like a barrage of hot nails. Ryan leapt up from his place beside the fire, where he’d fallen into a thoughtful stupor, and rushed inside.
“Hey, Emme. It’s okay, Daddy’s here.” He rocked her for a minute, rubbing her back.
“Boo-boo,” she said, and stuck out her lip. “Where star?”
He deflected the topic. “What do you say we take a bath? Hmm?”
“No like. No like.”
He felt for a moment that all there was to being a parent was putting your kids down for naps, making sure they ate, having short bouts of play time, and then off for bath. One continuous, uninterrupted loop.
“Come on, it’ll be fun.” He put on his best fake smile. “Daddy stinks so bad he thinks he could date a swamp monster.”
“Wamp monster?”
“Exactly. A big, sexy wamp monster.”
Emily began to search the room for said wamp monster. What she found instead was the tablet. “Oo, bears! Bears!”
Ryan shook his head. He’d never realized how dependent humans had become on electricity. Without it there was little, if anything, they could do. There was no easy light at night, no electric cooktops, no TV or video games, running water or hot showers. And of course, most importantly, no Bears.
He rubbed his ankle and sucked air between his teeth. “Ouch.” His dog bite was getting worse. He kept the wound clean but it wasn’t enough. It was swollen, and bright pink. He stumbled into the kitchen and counted his supply of Levaquin.
“Nine.” He frowned and wished he had a drug guide. After a moment’s consideration, he separated the pills into two piles. Seven for Emily, two for him.
“Now, Emme, how do we get us some pyr?”
Chapter 16
“Isn’t she just the sweetest thing?” Lillian whispered.
“When she’s not screaming or pooping all over the place, yes. Yes, she is.”
“Do you remember when she took her first steps? Seems like yesterday, doesn’t it? Or when she ate real food for the first time?”
“It really does seem like yesterday, but at the same time, a life away. We were different people back then, you know?”
“Each step is so precious. I want to see every milestone. Every single one, even the frustrating ones. Like when she really starts talking, not just babbling and the occasional word she manages to get right. I can’t wait to watch her figure things out and tell us how she did it. I can’t wait to see her come home from school and have made a new friend. Or for her to tell me ‘that’s mine’ all the time. Man, I can’t wait for her to say I love you.”
“Doesn’t she do that already?” Ryan asked, closing Emily’s bedroom door like it was rigged to blow.
Lillian grinned. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“I do.”
“I’m curious to see how she phrases it, what inflection she puts in her voice and where. Will it be a ‘love you, Mama,’ with a sweet pitching down at the end? Or, ‘wuv yoo,’ like she couldn’t find enough letters to finish her thought. Or, even a ‘wuvoo,’ one sugary word that sounds almost Na’vi that can slay her mother’s heart? I can’t wait.”
“Let’s let her do it in her own time. Now, speaking of time.” Ryan led them down stairs, taking his wife by the hand.
Lillian closed the door to the master bedroom and licked her lips. “The first bit of time we’ve had in a while.” She put her cell phone on the bedside table, checking it once, then left it alone.
“Don’t I know it.”
Ryan drew his wife close to his body. Their lips slid against one another. Static electricity built as their clothes slipped away and fell into piles on the floor—the nearest topped with a pair of boy shorts that donned the words “Hello Kitty” across the crotch. It wasn’t long before they had bare skin against bare skin, rolling across the king size bed, Ryan’s fingers searching for a moist hole as Lillian stroked him. Lillian ceased her kisses, face disappearing from sight, and an instant later his body was shuddering involuntarily, curses creeping out of his mouth. He took her by the hair and gave assistance, pushing down and pulling up along with her rhythm. Ryan felt the need to climax; his body went tense, however—she pulled away just in time.
“Don’t want this over too quick, Slick.” She sucked the spittle off her lips and giggled.
“You’re calling me Slick? That’s your job. And look, if the word sopping was sexy, I’d use it right now.” He held up two fingers.
“Hah. I think you just did.” Lillian threw Ryan back onto the bed and mounted him, taking him inside of her, clenching her lotus muscles like a vice. He nearly lost his shit in the many time-distorted moments that came next. She rocked back and forth aloft his middle, and only through sheer force of will and mental misdirection, did he keep himself from blowing early and potentially sparking the creation of their next child.
Ryan kept his hands on her hips, undulating his movements along with her body, their eyes locked. Some couples might have taken this time to call each other bitch, or whore, or bad girl or daddy, but that’s not the way their sexual language worked. The look in Lillian’s eyes was just as strong as any bondage, and so none was needed.
The tip of Ryan’s member began to throb and tingle. Lillian’s phone vibrated. She slowed her pace for a moment, Kegel muscles encompassing Ryan, and turned to see who was calling. “Shit.”
“What?” Ryan’s hands resting on her hips drew tight.
She picked up the phone and put it to her ear, while trying to pull off of Ryan’s engorged cock.
“No,” he told her, and her eyes widened.
She cocked her head. “Hello? Yes, sir.”
Ryan thrusted upward, his hands firmly holding his wife in place.
“No. I—ohhh, no.” She tried to lift herself off of him but his grip was fucking iron.
“You aren’t going anywhere,” he told her. “You are gonna take this cock and you’re gonna like it.”
Lillian glared at her husband. A shock of awkward pleasure shot through her and she sighed. “Yes, Peter. What’s happening?” She twitched again. “I—I—I don’t see how that’s possible.” She tried to pull away once more, but Ryan wasn’t having it.
“Don’t make me call you a bad girl and give you a spanking,” he told her. Maybe he would have to be a little rough tonight after all. It had been nearly three months since they’d had sex last, and that session had finished in all of two minutes before she bolted off for work at Peter’s call.
“No, nothing’s wrong,” Lillian hissed into the phone between grunts. “Ryan! Quit it! Wait, what, sir? No. My husband is messing with me, that’s all.”
“Messing with you? Oh, that’s it!” Ryan went harder, pushing himself so deep inside it lifted her off the bed with each thrust. Her face twisted in surprise.
“Yes, sir. I’ll be there in t—wenty. Twenty. Buh—bye.” She hung up the phone and forced herself off of Ryan, his dejected cock sliding free of her tight embrace before having the chance to spill its massive load.
“What was that about?”
Lillian started getting dressed. “What was that about? You’re the one trying to fuck me while I’m on the phone with my boss! How awkward is that?”
“Awkward? You want to talk about awkward? What the fuck? No more awkward than you taking the call in the first place. Who takes a work call in the middle of having sex with their husband? What the hell?”
She shook her head. “I can’t talk t
o you when you’re like this.”
“Like what? I just wanted to spend some sexy time with my wife, that’s all. Is that a damn crime? But, it seems that Peter comes first once again.”
“You don’t even understand.” Lillian threw on her bra, the lovely curve and hard tips of her breasts vanishing beneath a silky balcony of white fabric. “Peter knows what’s going on.”
“Fuck Peter.” Ryan shook his hands in the air and his cock followed suit, each moment that passed the two of them becoming less and less attentive. “Don’t go, please baby, don’t go.”
She finished dressing, kissed him on the forehead and gave him a quick hug. “I have to.” And she was gone, leaving her husband to angrily finish by himself.
Chapter 17
Ryan’s ankle burned like hell. He did his best to keep active in spite of the searing agony, taking care of the house and working towards his patch design guidelines, but it was all a mess. Emily had scattered her toys everywhere. The floor was littered in empty water bottles and spent MRE sleeves. More leaves had blown in from the open windows. Used diapers piled up at the end of the couch like Civil War cannonballs.
Intermittent chills had found Ryan, and so he wrapped himself in a musty, fuzzy blanket and drank exceedingly stale coffee. He checked to see if Emily was also cold, but she seemed fine in her recently washed purple and yellow Capri pants with short sleeve shirt combo he’d pulled from the back of the closet. The thermometer on the back porch said seventy-two degrees. He pulled the blanket tighter and held his warm cup of sludge between his palms. He was so cold.
Emily was wild today, trying to climb on everything and do exactly what he said not to. Today was not an eight on his good/bad scale, it was a four. Ryan notated this in his paper log.
“Get off the bookshelf!” he shouted.
“No! Dis my bookstelf.”
“The hell it is, get down. Now! You’ll crack your skull open acting like a monkey.”
Two minutes later:
“Put those pot lids back, they’re made of glass. If you break them, you’ll cut yourself.”
“No! I no want!”
“Don’t make me spank you.” An empty threat. “I swear, you are this close, little one.”
One minute later:
“Get that bug out of your mouth. Do we have to do this again?”
Emily ran off, pigtails bouncing.
“Get back here! Now!”
Ryan’s ankle throbbed as his leg jolted with pain.
Wild dogs barked outside, and Emily froze in her tracks, fear taking control of her expression. “Dada!” She bolted for the safety of his arms. “Hold. Hold.”
Five minutes later:
“Stop shoving crayons up your nose! Here, give them to me. Emily! Now. Give them to Daddy. What’s this? What’s this sh—agh? For God’s sake, stop putting a plastic visage of the Mother of Christ in the microwave. I’m not sure if God approves of those sorts of actions. It has to be sacrilege.”
Six and a half minutes later:
“Eat eat!”
“Here, have some cheese tortellini. You liked it last night.”
“No. No.”
“Okay, but this is our last MRE. How about beef with mushrooms instead?”
“No. No. You.” She shoved the pouch towards him.
“What do you want? All we have otherwise is plain rice, because Daddy is not quite bold enough to try the canned foods under ‘Johnny You’re Taking a Risk.’ Could they be okay?” he wondered. “Surely they’d be fine. Right? I mean, can bacteria grow in a closed can?”
“No. No.”
“You have to eat something. You need to, and it’s my job to see it happen.”
“No.” She shook her head. “That’s fine.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Emily walked away.
Ryan sat down on the couch and began to eat the MRE with a touch of contempt. He swallowed the last of his share of the antibiotic pills. Emily still had three more doses, hopefully that would do it.
Ten minutes later:
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. How the heck did you take my food from me? When did this happen? I was sitting here the whole time.”
Emily was now eating his pouch of beef with mushrooms using nothing but her hands. Her clothes were covered in sauce and smelled like stew. Ryan threw his hands up and let her have the whole damn thing.
“At least she’s eating something.”
Thirty minutes later:
“Get back with that! It’s my pocket knife. You’ll hurt yourself!”
Emily squealed as she ran the circuit around the living room / dining room / kitchen.
Ryan finally caught up with her beside the entertainment center and snatched the closed knife from her hands. She began to cry and he popped her on the thigh. He shivered and drew the falling blanket back around his shoulders. “You will do as Daddy says. You hear me? I will not tolerate this sort of behavior.”
She fell onto the floor and sobbed, green snot bubbling out of her nose. He was losing his shit.
He had to remind himself that this too would pass. He was exhausted, and annoyed, but even so, this day with her would never come again. He had to treasure it for all the good and bad. This day was unique.
One minute later:
Emily curled up in her Daddy’s lap on the couch and held him tight. “I wuv you, Dada.” She wiped her forearm across her nose, covering it with gleaming mucus. Ryan cleaned it up with his shirt.
“I love you, too.”
“I wuv you,” she said quieter, voice dosed with sugar.
“I love you.”
“I wuv you!” she shouted and gave a toothy grin.
“I love you.”
Ryan was so exhausted he could barely get himself off the couch to go pee or, since all the toilets were without water now, poop in a bucket. His ankle radiated heat as he considered their next move. Emily was not in a mood today for them to go exploring dangerous territory, though he knew they needed to. The supply of military rations wouldn’t last much longer.
He laid there in their dim home, shadows dancing as sunlight found its way inside. The air was blissfully, terrifyingly quiet—so quiet Ryan thought it might drive him mad. On any normal day, any regular day before he’d ended up in this alien world, the first thing he would have done when coming home is turn on the TV or played some music. He’d do something to fill that interminable silence with light and life, add noise to drown out the mild case of tinnitus years of concerts without ear plugs had given him. But there was no power. No fucking power. And he felt impotent without it. All his specialized skills required one simple thing he’d never really thought of as a big deal until now. It had always come through the walls, through the air, from the power company straight to where he needed it, on demand. It could be trapped in tiny boxes or cylinders and carried anywhere you wanted to go. It was life, the flow of dislodged electrons offering their charge made by free movement, bent and thrust into machines designed such a way only they could drive.
He wondered how the hell people had lived before electronic technology. How had they gotten on without TV or news, without checking their phones every five seconds to see what someone posted on Facebook, or Tweet about nonsense with total strangers. Ryan’s fingers constantly itched with that need to just fiddle with something. All he wanted to do was sit on the couch and play a pointless game in which he made sandwich orders or built towers. He wanted to allow an epic film to wash over him like a breaking wave, scouring away his disbelief to drown in another world. He wanted—no needed—the escapes of modern life. He was born of those escapes, and even though he did have his books, they only went so far.
He knew that they were alone. He was working so hard at their survival, but at the same time, what was the fucking point to surviving? There was no one to share their life with. There was no one to impress, or dazzle, or be proud of you for working hard and doing good things. There was no one to talk to. No one to have
conversations with. The most intelligent discussion Ryan had had since this all started was with Emily over what way to part Bullwhip Barbie’s hair.
He needed adult interaction. He needed to not be alone. He needed to be connected to real people. To feel important. But he was alone. They were alone.
They were the only ones left.
As Emily ran around the room screaming bloody murder for no reason, Ryan put his face in his hands and trembled. His wife was gone. His parents were gone. Lawrence, his best friend, gone. There was nothing beyond these familiar walls but an empty, forgotten world where the decaying skeletal remains of humanity’s former life grinned back at him. His life was gone.
He got up, stomping around the room. A shiver worked through his body.
“They had it easy,” he growled. “They had it too damn easy. They got to pass on without any pain. Without any suffering! They just stopped one day, stopped moving and stayed right where they were.” He threw wide the front blinds and glared outside. “And they smile at me because of it? The little shits smile at me! They think it’s funny, that when the end of the world came, I was the one to get stuck at home changing the dirty—fucking—diapers!” He started lobbing Emily’s spent poop diapers at cars left on the street, soft shit spattering their sides. Next came glass bottles. “I should have been helping to prevent this from happening. Lillian, this should be you here! Not me!”
Emily was in the living room spinning in circles, eyes locked on the ceiling saying ‘whoa’ over and over, making herself dizzy. She was oblivious.
“This should have been you, Lillian.” He started to feel weak. “You would have known what to do. You would have known how to fix this. But what did you do? You fucked up again, made a bad choice, and put this idiot in charge. Need someone to build a system from the ground up so that everyone on Earth can communicate with each other? Call me in. But I don’t know a damn thing about pathology or foraging for berries or…or… whatever other shit you were good at! I was a Boy Scout, not fucking Bear Grylls!”
The Two That Remained Page 11