Ryan flipped the switch with a chonk.
There was a flash.
And then nothing.
Several of the breakers popped. He ran back around the house, unplugging everything he could. For a nervous moment he was afraid to try again. He closed his eyes and flipped the switch.
The breakers remained on.
Ryan smirked.
With strategic tact, he turned on lights and plugged in a few choice electronics. He kept this up until the power browned out. The three panels on a clear day had given him two lights, the TV and Blu-Ray player, and best of all, a working refrigerator. He immediately stored half his produce inside.
Ryan kicked back on the couch, turned the TV to HDMI 2 and smiled. “Hey, Emme.” He rubbed her back and she slowly woke. “Wanna watch a movie?”
The Lion King was watched three times that afternoon, with short pauses whenever the sun decided to hide behind cloud cover. Ryan decided he would need to build a series of rehabbed deep cycle batteries to add onto the system and fix this issue. But it was fixable.
“I think it’s safe to say we have reached Sharpe House version 3.3. What do you think, Emme? Is it safe to roll that patch out?”
“Simba!” Emily pointed at their low-power-consuming LED TV. Never had he cared how few watts it consumed until today.
“Yeah, that’s Simba.”
While Emily ate dinner, a beautiful collection of small sliced tomatoes, chickweed salad, boiled potatoes and of course, rice—a meal no child outside the end of days would find interesting when chips and chicken fingers were on the menu—Ryan breached the master bedroom. It was the one place in their house he’d been cautious to enter, other than for the times he’d boarded up the broken window and searched for Emily.
This was the marriage room, a palatial master of blues and greys, trey ceilings and stark white moulding, containing a great Californian king bed with high leather headboard and dark oak furnishings. It was the place where Lillian and he had coupled late at night, eventually bringing new life into the world. It was their getaway from it all, where they would read books and snuggle, no TV or mainstream distractions to bother them. The ceiling fan was always running, the room was freezing even in winter, which is why they had profoundly thick comforters, all the better to be close—especially in the buff. The walls were thickly populated with simple picture frames set in stair-step patterns, depicting stages of their relationship from their start at Stanford, to three weeks before the Event. Above the dresser was a shadowbox with a single, worn, half-eaten pack of Fruit Stripe gum pinned among a series of Polaroid photos with two attractive college students who had stars in their eyes.
He lifted the shadowbox from its nail and stared at it.
“I think it’s time, don’t you, Lillian?”
He rubbed the corner of the frame with his thumb and sighed, closing his eyes until he could focus again.
Direction found him.
“You knew I couldn’t leave it alone. That’s why you told me. Yeah, I think it’s time. We have a lot to do. It’s time.”
The shadowbox was returned to its mount.
It was decided. He would take a few days to pack what they needed, be sure that Fork had enough grass and water to be left alone, and then they would return to Unified Biological Laboratories.
It was time for answers. It was time to put his wife to rest.
Chapter 40
“There’s a party going on tonight. You wouldn’t want to come to it, would you?”
She paused, brows crinkling. “Maybe. Can I bring a friend?”
“Is it a guy or a girl?” He nervously chuckled. William would kill him if it was another dude-bro.
“A girl.”
“Sweet. Here, let me write down the address. It’s not far off campus. And here’s my number too, you know, just in case.”
“Cool. Here’s mine in case I can’t get you. Do I need to bring anything?”
“Just that smile, and… I mean… Eh… Nope, nothing at all.”
Chapter 41
Warm air rushed over the back of Ryan’s bare neck and head. The sun was squinting over the pin oak trees of Wells Drive in Forest Park, but from all signs, mid-to-late spring was coming on fast. Flowers had blossomed, new growth sprouted. Rain had fallen in record levels, their basins at the house nearly bursting. For this fact alone, he wished he knew something of farming, then perhaps he could leave the safety and comfort of the city, heading into the west to make better use of wet weather. And again the west, an ever-present calling for those who entered The Gateway City, was something that tugged his heart strings, either strong or subtle, depending on the eddies of fate’s inexorable winds. Go west towards the frontier. Manifest destiny. Your future awaits. And it had.
California was where he’d met Lillian.
Ryan headed east, against the grain of his primal instincts, toward Unified Biological Laboratories where Lillian patiently waited on his return. They had much to discuss before all was done.
He packed as well as he could for a trip that would last several days. They had food—pickles, salads and unripe garden vegetables sealed in green Tupperware, a pair of MREs, and a new creation of his, a kind of rice cookie made with honey, sugar, and crude goat butter. He’d packed a half gallon of goat’s milk for additional calories, thanks to Fork, though he figured it should be consumed by lunch or dinner on the first day, or else be thrown away without refrigeration. Lastly, he carried only one gallon of pure water, going on the assumption he could easily find more before reaching the riverfront. Water was heavy.
Emily walked beside him, wearing a colorful princess backpack, tether in Ryan’s hand. They both had clothes that were far cooler, shorts and t-shirts instead of pants, but split the difference between safety and comfort with tall boots that protected their ankles and part of their legs. Forest Park had become overgrown, now proliferated with thriving flora and underbrush that looked to be a cozy home for snakes. He wasn’t taking chances.
Hanging from his belt, Ryan fashioned a simple holster containing several Roman candles. A silver Zippo lighter, full of fluid with fresh flints, was within easy reach in his right pocket. The demon pistol was with him too, though at the bottom of his hiker’s backpack. The weapon scared him, summoning too many thoughts easier than what he was to face. It was safer if it was out of easy access, though he felt he still needed its comfort.
Ryan lifted Emily over a fallen tree, saying, “Weee!”
She laughed. “Weee. Again, Dada. Again!”
“Look! There’s another up ahead.”
He set her down and scratched his head. It itched like hell ever since buzzing it close with the electric groomer the night before, leaving it desolate. It had gotten far too long for his comfort or style. Now, it was too short and the skin couldn’t quite cope. Even his scalp was feeling deserted for the tangled hair it had lost.
The picnic areas along this drag of Forest Park, with their aluminum tables, steel drums for trash cans, and wooden gazebos, were so choked with scrub and tree sprouts that it was hard to stay on path. The road would often vanish beneath a carpet of debris. His own sense of direction, ignoring the trail, had led them past a table where a family of skeletons were now lying on the ground, only one sitting upright. Despite the gazebo’s cover, they’d been exposed to the elements and only small strips of cloth, including a golden Coach logo, remained.
He wondered for the first time what race or sex they might have been. Death was truly a great equalizer. As skeletons, humans all looked the same, differences found only in the form of size and age with little else to go on. They had all been human; no more, no less. True equity.
Ryan didn’t dawdle. Emily collected three sticks, calling the shortest of them a wand. She cast spells at the sky then asked to watch a movie.
Though it might have been easier for them to follow I-64 like they had coming into town at the start of this ordeal, he felt the need to see more than the twenty square blocks around th
eir house. This would be their home until forever, as far as he knew, and so he was compelled to know what was out there. Maybe there would be signs of others. Maybe he was lying to himself. Maybe none of this was happening and he was trapped in a persistent, psychotic episode. Who would say for sure?
“I think, therefore I am,” he told himself and drew Emily close. “She is real.”
The wind picked up around the time they’d reached the roundabout, turned right, and followed McKinley Drive to a bike / walking path that ran parallel to I-64. The ball fields on their left were still recognizable. Though they were thick with grass and blown trash, seeds of larger plants like trees or bushes still hadn’t taken root in the clay and sandy soil of the infields.
Ryan chased Emily for a minute, trying to keep her from getting too ill from being bored. They played hide and seek, ducking behind garbage cans and around toppled bicycles. She let out a loud roar the second time he found her. He faked jumping out of his skin the following round, screaming, “Eeep!”
“Dada, hide!” He complied for several more turns, then stopped. Hiding with a fifty pound backpack was exhausting, and not a very efficient use of his limited biological energy. Besides, his back stuck out like a tower no matter how low he was.
“Let’s move on.”
“No. I want hide.”
“We’ll play hide later. But we have a long way to go.”
“I no want go.”
“Sorry, baby, but you will go with Daddy.” He tugged on the tether and she resisted. This didn’t bode well for the rest of their trip.
Ryan dragged Emily behind him for nearly a quarter mile until The James S. McDonnell Planetarium, part of the St. Louis Science Center, reared its interesting head. It had always reminded Ryan of a white hunk of clay atop a potter’s wheel, not quite finished. The planetarium was a hyperboloid structure, designed by the famous architect, Gyo Obata, which appeared like a rounded cone with an upside-down flange flat at its apex. Ryan hated the fact that Emily would never get the chance to see this place in earnest. Despite all the modern additions after the Science Center had been purchased when he was a kid, it had the epitomic look and feel of space in the 1960s—a time of JFK, Cold War, and races to the moon in Apollo capsules.
He lapsed into a reverie, dreamy over days of doing things just like this; Lillian and he watching feature events at the center, or sneaking off to make out behind the nearby lake like teenagers. Emily started to whine again.
“Okay, sorry. Let’s keep moving.”
“Eat eat?”
“We can eat eat soon.”
“Pizza! I want pizza!”
His stomach growled. A reply found its way to his lips but died there. It would be a grave mistake to speak of foods they didn’t have, only serving to make them more dissatisfied with their current organic menu.
Once on Clayton Avenue, the press of nature gave way to fields of grass and split concrete. Ryan spotted a park just off the road and decided they would have lunch there.
“Remember the park?”
“Park?”
“Yeah. We can play at the park.”
“Play!” She shook her fists and started pulling him along. “Come on, Dada! Do it!”
Ryan fell into a patch of shade beneath a short, tan and brown playground tower connected to others by a steel bridge coated in cracked rubber. Being that the ground was made of post-consumer content, not mulch or even pebbles like most parks, there were no plants here to harass them. As Emily climbed the steps and stomped across the bridge, he served lunch.
“Come on, Emme.”
“No. I play.”
“Come eat, then play.”
He never had the sort of issues she did when it came to this. Even presented with something new and interesting, food wasn’t all that appealing. She was just too busy to think about it. He ate and left her food out, sitting atop his backpack laid over on the ground.
Emily wanted to slide down the slides like she used to, but for some reason held back. It wasn’t that she was afraid. He was sure of that, because she wanted to climb, to his discomfort, up and down the twisting corkscrew on the other side of the tower that stretched three times her height. It was as if the slide somehow tickled her mentally. Just when she was about to go down, she’d giggle and run away. Apparently, the slide told really good jokes. But the climbing, though it scared him terribly, was something she was getting good at.
Ryan slid down, showing her it was safe. It was so short his shoulders rested halfway down when his feet hit the bottom. She laughed and stomped off in the opposite direction, back down the bridge. He did it again. She started cackling. He shook his head.
“Want to swing?”
Again, it wasn’t as if she was scared of the swing, the swing merely a comedian like its friend the slide; she found them hilarious. Ryan put his backside in one of the cracked plastic seats and swung. There was freedom in swinging, a sense of near-flight, a lightening of the soul. Here, in this place, you were no longer forced to worry about bills or survival, research papers or code bugs. You were just a kid. Adults took care of all that boring stuff, not you. Your job was to play, to learn, to have fun, to grow.
Emily watched but didn’t wish to participate.
“Look how high I can go!” Ryan swung his legs out and hurled himself so hard he nearly went parallel with the supports. The chains went slack as gravity exerted its force, Ryan falling straight down for an instant, then a jerk as they went taut again. The shock of fear combined with the exhilaration of open speed, and he found himself grinning.
When she started to wander off, Ryan calculated his dismount, giving the swing one more hard throw of his legs, hurling his body along the invisible line of his inertia, straight ahead.
“Watch this, Emme! I’m gonna make a wicked cool jump.” Ryan’s mouth was wide with manic joy, teeth drying in the breeze.
At the apex of his ascent, the swing’s rubber seat snapped in half. The pain of hitting the ground was so sudden it took three halves to make a whole. He landed, half on his left foot, half on his ass, and half on his right hip.
“Ack!” He rubbed his butt and rolled over on his side. There was no comfortable way for him to agonize in this moment. “Ouch ouch ouch. Shit fuck shit.” He could hear the chains of the ruined swing slapping one another just out of sight.
Emily sidled up beside him. “You okay, Dada?”
He sucked air between his teeth. “Yeap,” he hissed. “Super. I’m just super. Fine and dandy.”
She put a hand on his shoulder and patted it. “No sad, Dada.” And proceeded to kiss him on the forehead, more teeth than lips. “Better?”
“Better.” He grinned and it wasn’t a lie. Maybe there was something to this toddler medicine.
After a couple minutes, collecting his breath, Emily started to eat her lunch. He kept his focus fixed away from her, afraid that observing her actions would cause them to cease. She finished half of her food and he was content with this. They pressed on.
Without proper maintenance, the buildings of the central west end, splendidly constructed federal and Romanesque revival-style brick and stonework edifices, were looking ragged around the edges. They were mottled with black grime from drainage, the once vibrant colors of red brick muted under the grey filter of time. Vines often found their home on faces where sunlight was prevalent, crawling up the brickwork like winding, segmented insects. Severe weather had made its trademark, with cycles of rainy springs, hot and windy summers, and snow heavy winters. Many of the foggy windows were cracked or broken, peering down at them as if they had black eyes. The slanted roofs had large sections that sagged, or were missing tiles and letting water get inside. The graveish sight of these great husks was somehow comforting—welcome companions to the derelict automobiles piloted by a skeletal horde, littering the sun-cracked streets.
Ryan let Emily lead them in the general direction they were headed, east, then north on South Vandeventer Avenue—turning at the now dis
colored blue and Dijon yellow Ikea—and again east, onto Laclede into University of St. Louis territory.
For the first time in years he felt no need to hurry. No need to rush and get things done as quickly as possible to make a short deadline. What they were seeking would be there later that day, tomorrow, or even twenty years from now. For the present, not the past or future, was the only mode of time that was humanly perceptible, and therefore real. He became enthralled with exploring the city alongside Emily, playing silly games and making jokes, and as a result, didn’t mind in the least if they got lost. Not that he was ever really lost in a place he knew as well as his mother’s face.
Songbirds twittered in the bushy branches. The wind blew in steady, cool gusts, forcing leaves to sing rustling songs as the city took breaths. Something creaked in the distance, metal on metal moved by air. The world as it was had become a dichotomy of life and death, the old passing in light of the new. The Earth-saving hippies were right. Nature would move on just fine without us.
He had come to accept this.
The familiar memories of hot, heavenly food sauntered past without a hope of taking his now fifty-page order. He could almost smell their spectral aroma, a mélange of savory and spicy. He could almost taste their phantom essence, filling his stomach along with his soul. Comfort foods. But there would be no Imo’s Pizza. No Provel cheese. No toasted ravs. No cold bottles or frozen custard. Nothing but what he could grow or could be found growing. He was so fed up with the vegan thing he was ready to go full-on carnivore. If he had the chance, he might just kill another person in cold blood for a pizza with extra cheese and Italian sausage, and not even feel bad about it.
Cars rushed past. People swarmed the streets in their suits and jeans and thin, summer dresses. Tourists took pictures of the nineteenth century architecture and selfies with their new Cardinals’ swag. Explosions from above Busch Stadium cascaded down the traffic choked streets. Each St. Louisian smiled at its report, and went on with their day, a familiar backdrop giving them a unified sense of city pride. Another home run followed up by a double play, cheering and shouting. “Let’s go Cardinals, let’s go!” No fair weather fans here. Three strikes and you’re out.
The Two That Remained Page 24