“What did you mean, this crept up on you?” Gaby demanded.
She expressed the intensity of her feelings as quietly as ever—more quietly—whispering the last, most intense part. He found himself leaning closer to listen. She fixed him with her dark eyes. However close to death she may have been, she was fiercely alive now. In her quiet way. “It wasn’t that way for you?” he asked.
She looked around. A pair of 180s. “No. This shit just happened.”
“Then we have differing perspectives,” Darwin said, like that was definitely a good thing, like it cheered him up somehow, like between the two of them they had this dead thing totally surrounded.
“Did you do this?” she asked.
“Me? Are you kidding? No. Do you think someone did it?”
“How should I know? What about the dead people? What should we do?”
Darwin was surprisingly quick with his answer. “Leave them. It won’t be very pleasant around here in a few days. We can’t possibly bury them all. My name’s Darwin. What should I call you?” He stuck out his hand.
She knew his name. It came up on her screen when he swiped his card. Darwin Berang. What kind of name was Berang? Who names their kid Darwin? “Gabriella,” Gaby said. She took his hand.
“I thought only your mother called you that.”
“My mother’s dead.” As a mackerel. She let go of his hand.
“It’s a pretty name,” he said.
She wished she could say the same about his. Grandma took her to church. They pronounced it evil-lution. Even her biology teacher in high school got nervous when Darwin’s name came up, like maybe he was a registered sex offender. Once you tell people they’re nothing but animals, especially a sweaty class of 10th graders, anything might happen, right?
Even though everybody else was dead, they still had their needs, and it wasn’t like anyone was going to stop them, and they’d both missed lunch. They walked across the street to the Olive Garden, trying not to look through the windshields at the dead. The glare hurt their eyes. Having needs was what set them apart from the dead behind the windshields, piled up at the bus stop, scattered around the parking lots. At least there weren’t any in the street. You’d have to be crazy to walk across this street.
They cooked themselves a nice meal in the Olive Garden kitchen after they dragged all the dead into the walk-in. There weren’t that many—more employees than customers. It had been slow, mid-afternoon. The Specials didn’t look very interesting. All the breadsticks were burned, the pasta gummy. There was a nice fire in the grill. They cooked steaks even though neither one of them usually ate red meat. They didn’t see the harm in an occasional indulgence. They opened a bottle of Chianti. Neither one of them usually drank. Alcohol was contraindicated for someone taking Darwin’s prescribed medications. Fortunately, he hadn’t taken them in years, and not just because he couldn’t afford them. Gaby had no prescriptions but lived with Grandma, for whom anything fun was contraindicated. They clinked their glasses together, chewing and swallowing, and felt like they were in a TV ad.
“What if they turn into zombies?” Gaby asked.
“Why would they do that?” Darwin asked, like maybe she had a theory about the life cycle of the dead. Darwin always liked to learn new things. He knew nothing of zombies, and his vampires were out of date.
She shrugged like she was just making conversation. She didn’t like zombies. It was her brothers who were into zombies, who made her watch them on TV, then hid under her bed and reached up and grabbed her, making zombie noises in the middle of the night when Mom was at work, making her scream and giggle and wet her bed, and they had to change the sheets and wash and dry them before Mom got home. She never told.
She and Darwin were watching the TV in the restaurant, making the rounds of the channels to see what they could find out about the dead. Darwin had found the remote beside the hostess. It must all be automatic, the shows and the commercials: Two and a Half Men, Jeopardy, Rick Steve’s Europe. Alex Trebek wasn’t dead, but he was making Christmas jokes in April. Finally, they found a live broadcast. Dead guy sat on a sofa, his new book on a table in front of him, while a dead woman was supposed to interview him. They were slumped together like they were in a huddle over the next question. Darwin thought he’d seen the book in a stack at B&N. The weather was next. It was blue. Everybody LIVE! was dead at CNN too. Darwin handed the remote over to Gaby and turned on his Kindle. It welcomed him. He was registered automatically. He shopped for the dead guy’s book.
Gaby found a soccer stadium full of dead people and turned off the TV. There was music playing in the dining room, some classical music you’ve heard a million times she didn’t know the name of. Darwin probably knew. He looked like the type who knew things. They hadn’t found where to turn the music off, though they hadn’t looked too hard. She thought about looking again. She wished she knew the name of this piece. She’d never know now. The first time she remembered hearing it, she was watching old cartoons. Daffy Duck. She liked Daffy because he was black. He was in Italy. He had a boat. Venice. She always wanted to go there. Was it underwater yet? Was everybody dead in Venice? Or had they already left and were dead somewhere else? That would suck. “Too bad about the breadsticks,” she said. “I really like those. Do you have anyone?”
He hesitated. He knew what she meant. He just didn’t like to admit it. It was remarkable, really. No siblings, both parents dead for some years. Largely friendless since grad school, a serial temp worker who didn’t like to drink and couldn’t afford to eat out, he didn’t have to think long on the answer, or why it was so. He secretly never took any of the medications ever prescribed for him. He developed an interest in side effects early in life. He wondered if that’s why he hadn’t died—never properly socialized, he missed the moment when we were all supposed to let go. He glanced up from the Kindle. He’d just found New Releases in Literature. He supposed literature lived on no matter what—that’s what made it Literature. Something had to, besides Amazon saying it was. He pictured the New Releases like little fishes the trout hatchery dumped into the streams every year. They didn’t live on. They said catch and release, but sooner or later, somebody ate them. Darwin would. He loved trout. Cooked any way. Except raw. He didn’t like sushi. Another reason he didn’t have any friends. “No. No one,” he said.
Her eyes were bright. Was that her returning life or her approaching tears or both? He didn’t know. He looked away. Every time Darwin had ever encountered a crying woman, from his mother onward, it hadn’t turned out well. She didn’t want him getting involved. He wouldn’t know what to say, what to do. He would only make it worse. Sometimes, he used to look up from whatever he was doing as a kid into the glistening eyes of his parents and not know what to do. They didn’t either. They found help. Lots of it.
He found the dead man’s book, and though it didn’t look like his sort of thing—kind of weird and offbeat and twisted—he bought it anyway. Local author. Saw him on TV. Dead. He’d never seen a living author dead before. While he was in the Kindle Store, he downloaded all of Mrs. Gaskell for free, delivered automatically to his Kindle. That’s how he justified the expenditure, all the free content. It was cheaper than a new TV. “What about you?” he asked. “Do you have anyone?”
“Me neither.” Both brothers dead, Mom gone, father unknown. That left Grandma, and it was her time to go anyway, after all she’d been through. Gaby couldn’t feel too bad. The woman talked about Heaven her whole life long. Business must be booming there. Everybody seemed to be dead but her and Darwin. How weird was that?
Weirder? Nothing else was. Darwin was the first to notice. She thought he was just reading his Kindle, short stories he said. “Surreal,” he said. She wasn’t sure she remembered exactly what that meant, didn’t want to look stupid asking. Then he asked her, “Have you noticed the birds?” He shut off the Kindle, pointed out the window.
She hadn’t noticed, but once he mentioned it, she saw they were everywhere, not l
ike thousands or anything, like in Hitchcock, but plenty, like usual she guessed. There weren’t that many trees around here, and that made it look like more. Plenty of poles, lights, wires, and signs though. Birds looked fine. So did the squirrels. Something was making a noise in the trashcan where they’d thrown out the burnt breadsticks. She bet if she went outside and looked, there would be ants crawling around on the soda cups, or maybe with all the bodies around, they’d be crawling around on them.
She saw this movie once. Ants all over everything. Everybody. Except some beautiful redhead and a big sweaty guy who was into her, somewhere in South America. After seeing that movie, Gaby and her brothers smeared her Barbie—the one with the twisted leg from the flamethrower incident—with pancake syrup and buried it in an anthill. She screamed stuff, and they laughed and laughed. That was a good time. She missed her brothers. They were twins. They had a different father than she did, but that didn’t matter. They were angels to her.
A dog walked into the dining room—where Gaby and Darwin had the nice big booth in the corner—and looked at them peculiarly. He was a big beautiful Golden. Then they noticed his harness. He was a guide dog. So somewhere out there in the parking lot was a dead blind person who’d been headed for the Olive Garden when everybody died. Somebody must’ve driven them. No way they could’ve walked here safely from the bus. Darwin wouldn’t dream of crossing Broad Street, dog or no dog. Some guy texting on his phone, steering with his knees in three lanes of traffic with a burger hanging out of his mouth doesn’t care if you’re blind. He’s got his own navigational problems.
“Here boy,” Gaby said and offered the dog a hunk of her steak. Gaby liked dogs a lot, had never lived anywhere you could have one. Especially one like this. Big as a pony. Big as a pony was like dead as a mackerel, almost. Something Mom said. Gaby had seen ponies, though, even sat on one at a school fair when she was little. Her brothers were still alive then. Ty on one side of the pony, Jay on the other. This dog wasn’t that big, but he was big enough, and he looked like he’d just had his hair done at the beauty shop like Grandma used to. A real pretty boy. She adored him.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Darwin asked when she fed the dog, but it obviously was. The dog, whose name was Elvis, according to his collar, camped out beside them, having decided they were his next blind responsibility. The last humans. Gaby petted and hugged his big head and told Darwin she had always wanted a dog. Elvis wagged his big tail and smiled.
He enjoys the petting, but pays close attention to everything going on around them. You think it’s easy leading the blind? Harder still, people who think they can see. Elvis lets them finish their meal. He’s a good boy. But they should really think about leaving. To them, there’re just dead people everywhere. To others, they’re food. Carrion. Not to Elvis. He’s horrified at the idea. But he’s a good boy. Nobody knows better than a good boy that not everybody is. You can’t screw up leading a blind guy around. Eye-level with the meat counter or a dead squirrel in the road—not your concern. There’s no room for error. He misses the blind man, but he can’t worry about that now. He wonders if the woman will give him the bone. No begging. Elvis doesn’t beg. You know why. Good boy. Yes! The bone. Good boys get the bone.
More wine. Coffee. Cheesecake. A little bit of lemon liqueur. Brandy. Darwin and Gabriella didn’t get out much. They knew they should be moving on, but who knew when they might have the chance to go to a nice restaurant again? This one wasn’t so nice when you thought about what was in the walk-in. On the other hand, they didn’t want to face what was outside either. They returned to the bar, away from the windows, so they wouldn’t have to look at all the dead people in the parking lot, and Elvis followed them. What was that liqueur in the tall skinny bottle? Darwin remembered his mother used to like that. He didn’t usually talk about his family, meaning never, but Gabriella was a good listener. Lovely name. They’d talked so much about the dead, he hadn’t found out that much about her.
Finally, Elvis stands up and barks at them. A little yip. A gentle reminder. Can’t they hear what’s going on outside? Smell it? Even a good boy has his limits, and the bone’s already gone. Puppy bones lasted days.
They decided Elvis was right, skipped the Galliano, and went out in the parking lot. This time she did take his hand. Somehow, Darwin managed to end up with his arms wrapped around her, and her face buried in his chest, which kind of forced him to take in the scene, since the top of her head was under his chin. He tried not to throw up on her head. He liked the feel of her head under his chin, though. It steadied him. He didn’t have much experience in the comforting department, so he rubbed his chin on the top of her head sort of like she’d done when she hugged Elvis’s head. It seemed to work. Darwin felt proud.
Elvis never knew there were so many bad dogs in the world. The buzzards started it, of course, but now the dogs—you know the sort—are showing up and getting into it with the buzzards and each other. Fighting over … You don’t need to know what they’re fighting over. Disgusting. What’s next? Coyotes? Elvis and the blind man used to live in Tucson. He was afraid to go out of the house after dark. He sits beside the man and woman and waits. This is their call.
Darwin’s nice, Gaby decided in his arms, which helped her get it together. Gaby was not one to freak out for long. She grew up with zombies under her bed. They had to figure out how they were going to leave the dead and soon, since more and more dogs and buzzards kept showing up. They needed to find some wide, open spaces without dead people—besides the parking lots that stretched for miles in either direction—but how to get there? Even if they could start a car, they couldn’t navigate around all the rest of them. They could walk, but it would be awfully far. They were still holding on to each other as they raced through all the possibilities.
Darwin suggested bikes, and Gaby liked the idea and gave him a big hug.
They went back into the Target to pick out some bikes. Turns out they’d both had their bikes stolen just when they were getting past their sore knees and butt troubles and had started to enjoy them. They wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. The stolen part. Dead people don’t steal. They were trying to look on the bright side. Listing advantages. They were both pretty drunk.
Gaby pointed out the security cameras, all automatic, and they posed and waved and decided they were looters now—something else they had in common, besides being drunk and totally surrounded by dead people. They thought that was pretty funny, and they were both laughing by the time they picked out some extremely nice bikes from Target.
They also got some of those padded pants and gloves and baskets and panniers and food and sleeping bags and a tent and it went on and on. It was fun. They hadn’t shopped much with another person, never thought of it as recreation. Gaby saw that all the time at Target. Couples showing up and just wandering up and down seeing if they felt like buying something, like they were strolling around the park. Sometimes, they brought the thing back still in the box, but they’d still had the afternoon shopping together, like a date, and sometimes another when they made the return. That’s basically what she and Darwin were doing. She shed the red outfit and got something nice. It was easier than you might think to ignore the dead.
Gaby laughed out loud in Tents when Mick Jagger started singing “Wild Horses” again, and she had to explain why to Darwin so he wouldn’t think she was laughing at him working up a sweat trying to put the tent on the front of his bike with bungies, and he laughed too.
Then he gave her this look like she was Barbie, and he wanted to haul her out of an anthill. Not to lick the syrup off her body—that’s where her mind went—but to straighten out her twisted leg and make her forget about the ants. Gaby had soaked the Barbie’s hair in Red Hots and vodka, and the ants ate it down to the plastic. Gaby’s hair sort of looked like that, short red frizz, latest fashion mistake. Darwin didn’t even seem to mind that.
They had both seen this movie.
Gaby used to sit between
her twin brothers on the sofa and watch any movie that was on, and when she didn’t understand it, they would both explain it to her, but they always told her two totally different things. They thought that was funny, and if she was them, older and two of them, she would’ve done the same thing. When she got older, they explained things they knew she understood fine just for fun, trying to outdo each other’s craziness. Ty told her Helen Keller could really see and was faking it. Jay told her Captain Kirk was insane, and the Starship Enterprise never went anywhere. She missed her brothers, though Gaby felt like there was only one way to tell this story: last man, last woman.
Darwin watched movies all day when he worked at the video store between his second degree and his third. He had a terrible crush on one of the women who worked the same shift, and she always picked out what they watched. Mostly foreign. He wasn’t sure what a lot of them meant. He would forget to read the subtitles, stealing glances at her, or he’d have to wait on a customer, but there was lots of sex in all of them. He was about to ask her to do something sometime when they weren’t working, when someone figured out he lied on his application and fired him. There was this one movie. Last man, last woman. A second guy showed up who hadn’t lied on his application.
Darwin kissed Gabriella before the other guy had a chance to show up.
Gaby was surprised how good a kisser he was. So was Darwin.
Elvis watches the automatic doors. Anything can set them off. A rabid coyote. Snakes. Bats. Squirrels. Smells. Dreams.
He waits.
Elvis followed them inside, of course. Gaby decided to take his harness off, let him decide what he wanted to do. She thought his harness was another version of her red shirt and nametag, an understandable mistake. He sat still while she took it off, but it made absolutely no difference in his behavior. Good dog goes deep.
Lightspeed Magazine Issue 36 Page 16