The day after: An apocalyptic morning

by Jessy Cruise

  "My what?"

  "I'll explain later," he said. "Let's do it."

  Without giving her any more time for self-doubt, he poked his head around the corner of the concrete wall, looking at the other side. Along the Route 63 side of the subdivision the concrete wall curved back and forth, following the twists of the road. This meant that only about a hundred feet or so was visible at any given point before a blind spot intruded. Skip saw nothing in that first length. "It's clear," he told Paula. "Move!"

  She moved, her doubts and fears pushed to the back of her mind now that the moment was at hand. She trotted sideways through the gate, her feet squishing in the mud, and trained her rifle along the wall, eyes searching for the intruder. "Clear," she said, just loudly enough for him to hear.

  Skip then slipped around the corner, hugging the wall. Holding the AK-47 at the ready, he moved forward, edging out sideways so that more and more of the wall came into view. Paula, as she had been taught, edged out even further, covering his advance with the automatic weapon, her eyes taking everything in at once.

  They continued to move sideways, crossing over the highway and squishing through the mud on the other side until all of the blind spots along the western wall were visible. They could now see all the way to the point where the wall turned the corner. There was no straggler visible.

  "Okay," Skip said. "He's probably still on the north side somewhere. Let's move up to the corner real carefully, keep a sharp eye on the bend in case he comes around it."

  "Right," Paula said. She began to move forward.

  It took them almost twenty minutes to cover the distance from the front gate to the northwest corner of the wall. They stayed to the west side of the road, keeping close to the rolling hills and the trees that marked that particular approach. As they drew closer they began to move from tree to tree, trying to keep their bodies hidden from view. First Paula would move forward and then Skip would leapfrog past her, then the cycle would repeat itself. As such, it was Paula that was first in position to peer around the corner.

  The northern stretch of wall was perfectly straight and she saw their quarry immediately. He was about a hundred and fifty yards from the corner, crouching in the shadows, his back to the wall, his rifle held tightly against his chest. He had seen her last dash from one tree to the next and he reacted to it. He stood and turned towards her, bringing his weapon down into firing position.

  "Shit," Paula gasped, training the M-16 on him. She began to shoot, squeezing the trigger in short bursts of three and four rounds apiece. The sharp cracks of gunfire sounded off and reddish-orange flashes exploded from the barrel. She saw specks of concrete chip off of the wall next to the man and she adjusted her fire, swinging just a hair to the left. Just as he got his own rifle into firing position, it suddenly fell from his arms and he dropped to the ground, rolling into a shallow gully. He didn't move. "He's down!" she yelled at Skip.

  He leapfrogged around her and pulled himself behind a tree, looking in the direction that she had been shooting. It took him a moment of searching but finally his eyes locked onto the prone man.

  "He was gonna shoot at me, Skip!" Paula said, near the verge of hysterics. "He was pointing the rifle at me! I swear!"

  "It's okay, Paula," he said softly.

  "I didn't want to shoot him, but he... he..."

  "Paula," he barked, a little louder this time. "Chill out, baby. We're not done out here yet. Let's move up and make sure he's not playing possum."

  "Move up?" she said.

  "Right," he told her, his eyes never leaving the man on the ground. "Take the lead please."

  "But... but..."

  "Take the lead, Paula," he said. "Keep that 16 trained on him. If you see him move, shoot him again. Let's finish our job, okay?"

  She took a few deep breaths. "Okay," she said, nodding. "Let's move up."

  As they started to move forward, Skip took a brief moment to report what had happened to Paul and the other guards that were monitoring the walkie-talkies. "We're moving along the northern wall now," he reiterated to them, "so you guys in positions 2 and 3, hold your fire. If you see movement it's probably us."

  They reached the man a minute later. He was not playing possum. He had a series of holes in his chest and even one in his throat from the bursts that Paula had fired at him. His eyes were open, unblinking, staring upward. His mouth was locked forever in an expression of panic.

  "He's dead," Paula whispered in awe. "I killed him."

  "You sure did," Skip agreed, bending down to take a better look. "That was damn good shooting. You did well."

  "I've never killed anything before," she said, unable to take her eyes from him. "I mean... I mean..." She shook her head a little. "I mean, he was just alive a minute ago and now he's not."

  "And he was just about to shoot at you a minute ago, wasn't he?" Skip asked. "And he was also trying to sneak into our town with a gun."

  "Well... yeah... but..."

  "But nothing," he said firmly. "You did what you had to do, what you signed up to do." He stood up, turning towards her. He took her face in his hands and forced her to look away from the body and up at him. She was trembling all over. "It's okay to feel guilty about it," he told her gently. "It's a natural reaction among those of us that have morals. Just don't feel too guilty about it, okay? He played the game with us and he lost. Too bad, so sad for him. We get to go back to town now, and he gets to stay here and contribute to the future ecology. And that's the way it should be."

  "I never thought it would be like this," she said, her eyes trying to look at the dead man again. "So... so... fast. It was all over in a second."

  He put his arms around her, pulling her against him. "That's the key phrase," he said, patting her back comfortingly. "All over. You reacted just like you should have and now it's all over, right?"

  "Right," she said doubtfully, letting her head fall to his shoulder. "All over."

  He held her that way for a minute, feeling her body tremble with adrenaline overload, knowing that embracing each other in this hostile environment outside the wall was a bad idea but doing it anyway. Finally she calmed a little and he was able to release her. He could see a few drops running down her cheeks that might've been rainwater but were probably tears.

  "Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to freak out like that."

  "As long as you do it after the shooting stops and not during it, don't sweat it. I think we should head back in now though."

  "Okay." She gave him a weak smile.

  They quickly stripped the man of his weapons and ammo and then began to walk back the way they had come, their pace a little more hurried. Skip reported over the radio that the subject was dead and that everyone could return to normal alert status. As they reached the surface of the highway and began to walk south along it, towards the main gate and the safety of the subdivision, he noticed that she was trembling even worse then she had been back at the body.

  "It takes a while to get it out of your system," he said, putting his arm around her shoulders again and pulling her against him. "We'll get you some dinner and you'll feel a little better."

  "I don't think I could eat right now," she said, leaning into him. "I already feel like I'm about to lose my lunch."

  "Well how about a drink first then," he suggested. "We'll get Paul to break loose a little whiskey ration from the supply room. There's nothing like a few shots to help put killing someone into perspective."

  "Now that sounds like a plan I'd be happy to participate in," she said.

  Meanwhile, back at the community center, dinner was in full swing and most of the town population, oblivious to the events going on just outside their wall, was contentedly chomping down on bowls of stew that had been made with cans of beef and vegetables and more than twenty packages of Top Ramen noodles. They sopped up the juice of this soup with pieces of freshly baked bread that had been cooked in large ovens powered by propane piped into the kitchen area from a series of tanks that ha
d once stood outside every home.

  Jack, his belly full, finished up and carried his dishes up to the large cafeteria rack that stood in the corner of the gym. Stacy was there, just removing a fresh batch of dirty dishes so she could carry them to the trough that was used as a sink. His arrival there at the same time as hers seemed like a coincidence but was not. He had timed it carefully in advance.

  "Hi, Jase," she said, flashing the smile he had become increasingly infatuated with. "How was chow tonight?"

  "It was bitchin," he said enthusiastically, setting his plates down. "Did you cook it?"

  "Me and Sara did," she told him. "It's kinda hard to keep from getting boring when you only have canned food and powders to work with, but we try. I'm glad you liked it."

  "I did," he said, giving her his own smile. "It was like totally the bomb. Really."

  "So you heading out for watch now?" she asked, her hands moving plates from the large cart to a smaller, wheeled one.

  "No," he said. "I'm off tonight."

  "You get a day off?" she asked, surprised.

  "Skip makes all of us take at least one day off a week. He calls it a mental health day."

  "So he's not quite the slave driver everyone thinks he is, huh?"

  He shrugged. "I'd actually rather be on shift tonight," he said. "What else do I have to do anyway?"

  "If you're bored," she told him teasingly, "you can always come back and help us do dishes."

  He thought about that for a minute. "Okay," he finally said.

  She looked at him strangely. "I was kidding, Jase," she said. "You don't really have to help us."

  "So I can't then?" he asked, disappointed.

  She looked at him as if he were insane. "Are you trying to tell me that you want to come back and help with dishes?"

  "Why not? Like I said, what else do I have to do around here?"

  She shook her head a little, the way one does when one realizes they are dealing with the mentally challenged. "If you wanna help clean up after these slobs," she said, "then I sure ain't gonna stop you. Start grabbing some dishes."

  He got a crash course in Garden Hill kitchen clean-up operations over the next two hours. Though Sara Gillian, who had been a cafeteria worker at the elementary school before the comet and who was the official leader of the "culinary department" as it was called, thought he was crazy too, she had no problem putting him to work. The hot water hose that normally supplied the bathtub had been run into the kitchen area and was used to fill the trough with soapy water in which the dishes were soaked and scrubbed. They were then moved to another trough full of cold, clear water from the fire engine where the soap was rinsed off. From there they were given a final rinse with running water supplied via hose from the rain gutter before they were neatly stacked on drying racks until the next morning. Jack was put on rinse detail, making him the middle of a chain of motion.

  "Hey, Sara," Stacy said at one point as she scrubbed the grime from a bowl, "did you know that Skip makes the people on his detail take a day off every week? What do you say about that?"

  "I say dream on," she answered. "Until that cunt Jessica decides to assign me a few more women to help out in here, we're both stuck working every day."

  "Like that's gonna happen," Stacy said bitterly.

  "Yeah," Sara said, "because we can't have women of breeding working as mere kitchen hands, can we?"

  "God forbid," Stacy said.

  "Even if most of them don't have any assigned jobs from day to day."

  "Wait a minute," Jack said, wondering if he was hearing correctly. "Are you saying that the two of you work in here every day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and that you never get a day off?"

  "That's the way it is, sweetie," Sara replied.

  "Jessica refuses to force any of the town women onto kitchen detail," Stacy clarified. "And you can imagine how many volunteers we get for the job. So, unless someone is getting punished for fighting or something and gets assigned kitchen detail, it's just the two of us. We're here from 4:30 every morning to almost 7:00 every night. We can usually get a little bit of a break between lunch and dinner, but it ain't much." She shrugged. "It's our lot in life I guess."

  "Yep," Sara said. "That's what we get for being poor women in a rich town. We're not part of the clique so we've been turned into the servants."

  "Don't ever let anyone tell you that the old ways are dead, Jack," Stacy added. "Believe me, they're alive and well."

  "Would you care to see a lady safely home?" Stacy asked Jack after the kitchen was finally shut down for the night. "I hear that there were bogeymen out there today."

  "Uh... sure," he said doubtfully, opening the back door of the community center for her. She waddled out into the darkness and the rain. He let the door swing shut behind him and then he quickly trotted after her to catch up.

  "Thanks a lot for helping out tonight, Jase," she said once he fell in step with her. "That was really sweet. We got done almost twenty minutes early because of you."

  "I'm glad I could help," he said. "It gave me something to do. And I mean what I said. I'll talk to Skip about talking to Jessica about getting some more people assigned to you."

  "Well," she said, "I won't hold my breath or anything. I've heard Jessica routinely turns down anything that Skip asks for."

  "Maybe I'll have him ask to keep the kitchen staff just the way it is," he suggested. "You know? Reverse psychology."

  She laughed, slapping playfully at his arm. "It just might work," she told him.

  They walked on through the rain, their feet splashing through puddles of backed up rainwater on the sidewalks, navigating along by using the ambient lighting of the houses they passed. They went up three blocks and then turned right, onto a street that backed up to the western wall. Most of the houses out this far were uninhabited and dark. Finally they came to a single story house, the same model that Jack, Skip, and Christine lived in.

  "Well, here it is," Stacy said, digging in her pocket for a key. "Home sweet home. You wanna come in for a little bit?"

  "Come in?" he said nervously.

  "Yeah," she told him. "I don't get company very often. And we won't have a chance to have our little talk in the morning since you're not on guard duty tonight."

  "Well... uh..." he stammered, suddenly nervous for no good reason.

  "Come on," she prodded. "I'm not gonna bite you. It's me, Stacy, remember?"

  "All right," he finally agreed, following her as she waddled up to the front door.

  She lit two oil lamps and two candles, bathing the room in soft, orange light. In the formal living room portion of the house, her laundry was hanging by a line, drying in the air. He saw several pairs of the stretch pants and stretch jeans she habitually wore as well as a variety of flannel maternity shirts, bras, and even some cotton panties. He blushed when he saw this, quickly turning his head away.

  Pretending not to notice his embarrassment she hung up his rain jacket for him and then led him into the family room of the house, which was just adjacent to the kitchen area. "Grab a seat," she told him. "I'm gonna go change into my jammies and get comfortable."

  "Uh... okay," he said, walking over to a couch and planting himself on it.

  "Don't I have a nice TV?" she asked as she disappeared down the hall with a candle. "It came with the house. Turn it on why don't you? Find us something to watch."

  Jack dutifully laughed at her joke although inside his stomach he almost felt as if he was going to throw up. What was going on here? Why had Stacy invited him into her house? Was it really just for company, as she had said? Or was it... something else that she wanted? Surely it couldn't be that, could it? He was just a kid! And she was pregnant! Pregnant women didn't do things like... like... sex did they? He didn't know but suspected that they didn't. After all, they were already pregnant. What would be the point of their body making them horny?

  In the five minutes it took for Stacy to change her clothes, Jack went through several cycles in wh
ich he first convinced himself that she was definitely trying to seduce him and then convinced himself that she just wanted to talk like they always did. He would first envision her emerging from the bedroom wearing a see-through negligee straight out of a Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue and then the vision would degenerate to a baggy sweater and a pair of sweats. He would talk himself into believing that she wanted him and then, just as quickly talk himself right back out of it. He was a kid for Christ sakes and she was a full-grown woman! Sure, she liked to talk to him, like to hug him, and had even pecked his cheeks a few times when she was feeling particularly affectionate. But desire? Need? He thought not. But still, maybe if she...

  "Much better," she said at last, walking out of the bedroom.

  He looked up at her with a little jump, seeing neither the negligee nor the baggy sweater. Instead, she was wearing a matching set of very proper, non-revealing silk pajamas. They were gold in color and appeared to have been specifically designed for pregnant women to wear since the hem of the top did not ride up and show her belly.

  "You like them?" she said, noting his interest in her attire. She gave a quick spin around, modeling them for him. "Pretty high class, huh?"

  "They're uh... nice," he almost croaked, not failing to notice the jiggle in her chest as she spun. He knew from living with Christine that that jiggle meant she was not wearing a bra. When he saw such a thing in his sister it always made him mildly disgusted for having noticed it. Seeing it in Stacy however, he felt a wave of desire wash over him. Blood began to rush to his penis.

  "They were probably about a week's salary for me before the comet," she said, setting her candle down on the table and plopping herself into the couch next to him. "But there's tons of shit like this in the supply room at the community center. Maternity wear for every occasion. I guess those rich bitches were good for something, weren't they?"

  "I guess so," he said, seeing that she had a bottle of something in her right hand. She tucked it in one of the cushions before he could see what it was.

  She put her bare feet up on the coffee table in front of her and leaned back into the couch. "Ahhhh, relaxation," she said. "This is my favorite time of the day. I can just kick it for a few hours until it's bedtime. Usually I just read or something but now I have some company." She smiled, her hand reaching out to touch his arm. "Did you know that you're my very first guest here? Not even Sara has been over to my pad."