He listened.
“I want to tell you something I never told you before.”
Drew straightened up.
“I’m not sure if my mom said anything to you… Well, I’m getting ahead of myself… Have you ever noticed how distant I’ve been with Candace lately?”
Drew nodded slowly wondering where this was going.
“Do you remember the last time I flew to New Mexico to see her?”
“About a year ago, wasn’t it?” he asked. “I wanted to go with you, but you said no.”
“That wasn’t me. That was Candace. She wanted it to be just us sisters.”
“Yes. I remember. She was having problems with her boyfriend or something.”
“That’s right.”
After waiting too long, he pressed, “But?”
“Do you remember specifically what I said it was about?”
“I think you said it was about her wanting to get married and her boyfriend stormed out and never came back.”
“And you believed it, right?”
“Well,” he said, “it did seem a little harsh on his part but, yeah, I believed it. She never had very good taste in men. And in all honesty, I stopped caring about your sister’s dramas. We had our own to contend with.” Then, remembering that she was talking about dead loved ones, he said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I shouldn’t talk about your sister like that, with everyone being...gone.” He shifted in his seat, uncomfortably. “There’s more to it, right?”
She said nothing.
“So, what happened?”
She cleared her throat and began. “I went out there and she greets me with smiles and hugs. I start to think about all the work I was missing - I had three open houses, one I was certain was going to be a quick closing - and I asked why she hadn’t flown out to see us, and she said she’d talk about it later.”
“She was always good at putting things off,” Drew said.
“So when we get to the house, my jaw hit the floor. It looked like a disaster zone. I mean, a real pigsty. Clothes lying everywhere, dishes piling up in the sink...
“Did I tell you this before?”
Drew shrugged, he didn’t remember.
“I was seeing a woman’s life unraveling before my eyes. But I say nothing, only joke that she was in serious need of a housekeeper. And she laughs.
“I wasn’t laughing, though. All I wanted to do was turn around and get right back on the plane. I didn’t want to be a part of any of it, at all. Does that sound mean?”
“No,” he said matter-of-factly.
“So we go to dinner on that first night.” She looked back at Drew, said, “How much do you remember?”
“Not very much, only that her boyfriend left her because he wanted to see other women, I think. Why?”
Eva fell into a thoughtful silence.
“Eva?”
She looked at him.
“That isn’t the whole story, is it?”
She shook her head.
“What happened?”
Visibly upset, her voice grew unsteady. “We went out to dinner, sorry, I said that already…”
“It’s okay,” he said, giving her a gentle pat on the arm.
“We didn’t talk much at the restaurant, just got totally shitfaced on wine and somehow managed to get back to her train wreck of a house without getting into an accident.”
Drew did what he learned from his own sessions with therapists over the years: he kept his mouth shut and listened, making sure to keep his physical responses - a nod of the head, a shrug of the shoulders, blinking - to a bare minimum. It was the best he could offer his wife as she confronted her demons.
“At one point she asks how we we’re doing, you and me. I say, ‘Fine, busy with work’ and stuff, never mentioning us trying to have children...” Eva paused as a surge of emotion welled up. She waited for it to go back down.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“She probably already knew through your mom that we wanted kids.”
“I never told my mother either.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Did you say anything to her or my dad?”
“No.”
“I always thought that unless it’s absolutely necessary to bring someone else in, our problems are ours and nobody else’s.”
Well, he thought sadly, you won’t have to worry about that anymore.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I bring the conversation back to her, asking if she and Calvin had called it quits for good. She gets all choked up and says yes. She says that they had a big falling out over something she couldn’t talk about over the phone.
“I ask if she spoke with Mom. ‘No,’ she says. I wasn’t surprised. She and my mom very rarely saw eye-to-eye. They were total opposites. My mom is very reserved and Candace has always been the outgoing, gregarious type. Adventurous. She could not stand having to deal with my mother telling her what she could or could not do. I can sort of understand that, but my approach back then was different. I was the one who would say ‘Ok, Mom. Whatever you want.’ Don’t make waves. Just go along with it knowing once you step outside the door there isn’t a damn thing Mom or Dad or anyone else could do to stop whatever you wanted to do.”
Drew cracked a smile.
“Candace didn’t have the patience for that. She argued with my mom over everything, what clothes to wear, her friends, curfews, and later it was about alcohol, boys, grades and birth control.
“Sometimes, I even thought Mom went too far. I think it was because she was afraid of Candace, a fear that she never felt toward me. She didn’t know how to handle her wild-child. That’s probably why Candace moved all the way to New Mexico, to get far away from my mom. She rarely visited her and when she did, they bickered. Though sometimes they did have heart-to-hearts. It wasn’t as if they were mortal enemies; they were just different personalities. Candace would even admit that sometimes Mom was right. I ask Candace what she didn’t want Mom to know and she starts balling her eyes out.
“She says, ‘There’s a reason other than my crystal shop that kept me from flying out to see you that I hadn’t mentioned over the phone.’ ‘What?’ I ask. Before she could answer, she starts crying again.”
Eva began to feel her face growing hot.
“She looks me straight in the eye and says, ‘I had an abortion.’”
She paused to stare at Drew, expecting to find cracks in his armor, but he remained firm.
She continued. “I’m not saying abortion should be outlawed, I’m not a pro-lifer or anything, I do believe a woman has a choice, but this was personal, you know?” She suddenly felt a frog in her throat. A moment later the tears began to flow in earnest. She spoke between bouts of sobbing. “This one really hit home!”
Eva doubled over and cried in her hands.
Finally catching her breath she said, “I couldn’t talk. I didn’t know what to say, so I started to cry. We were both crying like someone died.” She added bitterly, “And someone did.”
Eva stared at Drew for a long moment. She continued, “I don’t know, I guess Candace wanted me to feel sorry for her, or maybe just waiting for me to say something. And when I didn’t, she tried to explain. She got pregnant and when she told Cal, he freaked and threatened to leave unless she got rid of it. Plain and simple, although she made it sound like a Greek tragedy. ‘Cal, I love you. Cal, please don’t leave me. I’ll do anything you want.’
“Never once had they considered putting the baby up for adoption. Had she told me before she made such a rash decision, I - we might have been able to adopt her child. But she didn’t.
“After that, her relationship with Cal was never the same. It haunted her. She couldn’t look at Calvin without thinking of what she’d done. Over the following weeks she grew to hate him.”
“That’s not very long,” Drew said.
“Well, I think their relationship
was rocky anyway. I think her abortion was the last straw. They bickered every night, intensely, until it got violent.”
“He hit her?”
Eva nodded. “After that, she kicked him out for good.”
“So she lost the baby and her boyfriend.”
“Yep.”
“So her whole life collapsed.”
“Yep.”
“That’s pretty messed up.”
“That’s my sister for you. Messed up. She said she was too ashamed to tell me. She thought she could keep a secret but couldn’t. Stupid! I can’t blame her entirely, though. It’s just as much my fault as it was hers. If I hadn’t kept my life so personal, then I might have been able to talk her and her asshole boyfriend into handing custody over to us!”
“Sort of like a surrogate mother,” he said.
She looked up at him with bloodshot eyes, tears staining her cheeks. “Would you believe that once upon a time I actually thought of paying her to do just that?”
“Are you serious?”
She nodded. “It crossed my mind. If you recall I did say adoption wasn’t out of the question-”
“I remember,” he croaked.
“But this would have been better; through in-vitro fertilization that child would have been from us.” She gripped his hand firmly with both of hers. “You’ve been so patient with me, Drew. I love you so much.”
Now tears began to well up in Drew’s eyes.
Releasing his hand, she asked, “Do you know what really upsets me? What really pisses me off about all this? We put tens of thousands of dollars into medical expenses, surgery, hormone shots, in-vitro fertilization, fertility pills, and all the frustration of waiting and waiting, sometimes blaming you for my failures, and she goes out with some loser and gets pregnant without even planning to. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it!”
“I don’t know,” he said absently.
“I don’t understand God, Drew. What is he thinking?”
Staring out into the darkened landscape of a dying world, Drew hadn’t a clue.
“And she wonders why I don’t call her. Why I’m always too busy to visit her. How could I tell her that the sight of her puts a knot in my stomach? That I get ill over the thought of her. That’s hard to deal with… When I was out there I started thinking about that along with everything else in my life - but especially that. I should have asked her to be a surrogate way before she got pregnant.
“I wanted to apologize for my behavior. But I kept putting it off. Now that’s never going to happen. ”
She turned to him, her watery eyes looking as dead and hopeless as the world outside. “I want my sister back! I want my family back! But everyone’s dead. The world is dead.”
Drew felt a tug in his chest. He wanted to give her a hug, but hugging would only make her cry more.
Sniffling, she said, “I’m such a bitch! I’m such a stupid, worthless bitch… I just can’t believe how cold I was to her, to my family.” Looking at Drew with pleading eyes. “How could I have done such a thing?”
Softly he said, “You didn’t do anything wrong. You reacted to something your sister did. It touched a nerve. You were confused and sad and the only way you knew how to let it out was through anger and avoidance. I don’t know if you’ll believe me when I tell you this, but it’s completely underst-”
“I’m scared Drew.” she said, trembling. “Please help me. I’m scared!”
Suddenly he didn’t feel like playing shrink anymore. He felt like holding her. He reached over and hugged his wife. They held each other for an eternity.
Finally pulling away, she cleared her throat and said, “We should get some sleep.”
“I’ll take first shift,” he said.
“No,” she countered. “It won’t make any difference.”
Drew supposed it wouldn’t.
Eva pushed the lock button on the door. “Is your door locked?”
He checked his lock.
It was.
CHAPTER 7
THE SHEDDING
“It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep”
Shakespeare, Macbeth: Act 2, Scene 1
1
Although it was dark in the cab, Drew noticed a change in Eva’s mood. She looked renewed somehow. She seemed more alert, less sluggish. A great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Her only regret was that she didn’t tell him before the Apocalypse.
In the silence, Eva’s gaze shifted from one direction to the other like a deer sensing a predator. She swung around and peered through the rear window, then turned back and peered through the front one. There was no immediate danger, but looking at Eva one would think danger loomed right over their heads. She had awoken from a fitful sleep directly to red alert.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She eased back into the seat, eyes still wide and watchful. She nodded.
“Did you have a bad dream?”
She shook her head. It was what she awoke to that was the bad dream. She actually didn’t have any dreams, just her brain keeping alarm systems in check.
“How long was I out?” she asked eyeing the clock, her vision still blurred from sleep.
“Almost three hours.”
She rubbed her eyes, blinked, and as she sat up, her vision cleared. She winced.
“Face still hurt?” he asked.
Nodding, she gently patted her cheeks. “Wish I had some face cream.”
“Where’s your prescription?”
“In the other car.”
She had put the prescription bag in the middle compartment intending to put it in her purse later, but due to mitigating circumstances - like the world ending - she hadn’t gotten around to it.
“Right,” he said flatly.
Eva pulled down her hoodie.
“Other than your face, how do you feel?”
She groaned. “I feel like I woke from a near-death experience.”
“Well, it looks like sleep did you good,” he said.
“Have you gotten any sleep?”
He shrugged. “On and off but not very much.”
“How come?”
“I worry that I’ll wake up surrounded by so many...zombies...that I won’t be able to drive away.”
“We were surrounded before and able to drive away,” she countered.
“Yeah, but-”
“Drew, get some sleep. You need it. I need you to sleep.”
“What about you? Will you stay up?”
She wanted to say she would try but the truth would only prolong his insomnia, and she really did need him to rest. To Drew she said, “Yes. I’ll stay up.” To herself: For a little while anyway.
2
He lowered the backrest as far as the cramped space allowed. The angle remained a bit too high. Unlatching the bottom and pushing the whole seat back afforded an extra six inches or so, to stretch his legs.
It was still not good enough.
An idea occurred to him. Reaching under the steering wheel, he pulled the release handle and tilted the steering wheel up. Then he locked it again.
Eva watched with mild interest as Drew slid down into the footwell, turning around to face the backrest of the bucket seat, the steering wheel pressing into the middle of his back. It was a mild annoyance, but Drew figured he could get used to it. He rested his head on his folded arms on top of the seat cushion.
“Is that comfortable?” she asked.
“It’ll do.”
She gave an incredulous shake of the head. “Are all software developers this weird?”
“No,” he replied. “They’re dead.”
“Very funny.”
“Wake me in two hours,” Drew said and closed his eyes. Within minutes, he was asleep.
3
Eva stared out to her right at the streetlights along the distant foothi
lls across the low scrubland. She appreciated how they provided a sense of orientation, space, and distance. What would happen when the light finally go out? It was only a matter of time. She dreaded that day. Had it not been for those little bright dots, the darkness would be impenetrable, claustrophobic. At least she’ll have the stars to look up to, she assured herself. Even on moonless nights, like tonight, she’ll have the stars, and that helped calm her down. But in the silent blackness south of the horizon there would be the vast, featureless landscape where creatures hid, watching you.
Waiting for your blind approach.
Waiting for you to get close.
At that moment she needed to be by her husband, to nestle by his side, but the middle compartment got in the way. Instead she rolled the hoodie into a ball and tucked it firmly under her head. Eva shifted to her right side to face Drew, watching him sleeping soundly. The effect was soothing. Soon, Eva began to nod off.
Her eyes shot open as she gasped for air. It was the alarm system in her brain going off again. The difference this time was a sense of suffocation. And why was it so goddam stuffy in here? Not just stuffy but quiet.
Now, on the verge of a panic attack, she desperately needed air.
Eva unlocked her door. She grabbed the handle, looked at her husband.
Still sound asleep.
She read the clock in the dash - 12:31a.m. They have been sleeping for only an hour.
Opening the door would sound the DOOR AJAR alert chime and the dashboard lights would flash, startling him awake. But she needed fresh air.
Eyeing the ignition, she recalled that turning the power on only flashed the dashboard lights but not the alert sound; that only happened when you open the door or turn the key to start the truck. Drew was turned away from the instrument panel, so the flashing lights shouldn’t wake him.
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