Paths

by David DeSimone

Telepathically, he exchanged this message to his sister. She returned with a telepathic impression with the equivalent of a nod of agreement. They had seen this substance before, back somewhere by their mother’s corpse. It was smaller and hadn’t been closed off by a fence, providing unlimited access to drink, but it failed to elicit the same positive reaction as the larger, fenced-in body of water. One reason was that neither twin felt thirsty at that time, still orienting themselves to their new environment. The other was that the open water had an odor they did not like. To their highly sensitive noses, the smell had a buttery texture that was almost pleasant in its sweetness but so thick it almost gave weight to the air and it tended to linger in the nose long after moving away from it. The fenced-in body of water was different, having a scent Brother and Sister found agreeable. It was somehow clean and light.

  Still wrapped together in the pink sweat jacket, the twins waddled toward the red brick building, surveying the structure’s metal front door and sides, looking for a way through to get to the water. Finding none, they rounded the corner, began walking down the long stretch of what was the east side of the Central Park Reservoir. Across the body of water, the ornately decorated twin structures of The Dakotas, former home to the late John Lennon and recently departed Yoko Ono, towered over the rest of the skyline like a grand temple to the Divine.

  Pattering on the cold moist surface was not a very pleasant experience, but tolerable. Stepping on twigs and pebbles on the other hand gave the twins serious grief. Their feet were too soft and delicate for the rough terrain. They had to pay attention to where they stepped, forcing them to slow down, much to their annoyance.

  Continuing north along the reservoir, nearing 90th Street, the twins suddenly froze.

  A man wearing a longer covering than theirs (a trenchcoat) stood on the far end of the path staring back at them. His blonde hair was in tangles but otherwise not very dirty. His shirt was covered in dried blood and old sweat.

  Blood stained the calves of his pants all the way down to his sneakers.

  From the twins’ perspective, the man looked colossal. If this giant creature shared their taste for blood, they could be in serious trouble.

  The giant took a couple of steps, stopped. He raised his arms halfway.

  He looked as nervous as the twins felt.

  Took another few steps closer.

  The twins stepped back not taking their eyes off him.

  “Hello,” said the giant.

  A step closer.

  The twins stared at their opponent, their jaws clenching tightly, looking as if to flee.

  “Please don’t run. I won’t hurt you.”

  The twins sensed the giant did indeed look frightened. They also sensed fascination from him. They began to relax a little.

  The sounds coming from the giant’s moving lips were deep and amazingly complex and clear. The twins thought this as an attempt to communicate. They could almost understand him. Brother and Sister decided this ability could be very useful. Just the tool they needed to learn to help them understand the world more clearly. The giant could teach them. He might also provide them with other essentials such as food, water, heavy lifting and mobility. Everything they needed to get through their developmental stages. After that it would depend on the giant’s continued usefulness and on whether or not he would someday pose a threat. By that time, the twins would be capable of dispatching the man quickly. His fresh meat would feed them for days.

  The giant man in the trenchcoat moved closer.

  Closer…

  When he got within a few feet, the giant sat on his haunches. Staring first into Brother’s eyes, then into Sister’s, noticing the exquisitely sharp intelligence behind them, the man lost his balance. He reached back in time to prevent himself from crash landing on his tailbone.

  The twins watched the giant right himself back onto his haunches.

  The man studied the twins, noticing strips of dried blood and an oily substance coating their skin that he suspected were the remnants of amniotic fluid.

  Their mouths were bearded with blood. He tried to figure out how that happened but couldn’t come up with an answer that made sense.

  Unless they fed on the dead.

  He wanted to balk at the idea, wanted to shake his head and call himself silly for thinking such nonsense, but the more he looked at them the more he became unsettled by the way they stared back, as if sizing him up.

  He shook his head dismissively trying to convince himself that it was only his imagination running amok, that they’re just babies and, hell, they don’t even have teeth! Yet he still could not deny that they spooked him a little.

  He pulled out bottled water from his coat pocket, opened it.

  The twins stared the bottle in his hand, probing it with their eyes.

  Carefully, he reached forward and lifted the pink sweat jacket still covering the twins. He poured a little water on the bottom edge and raised it up slowly to Brother’s cheek.

  “I’m just going to clean your faces,” the man said and gave a nervous smile. “Okay?”

  Brother remained still, allowing the man to apply the cloth caringly to his face.

  “I don’t believe this,” he said, wiping in small circular motions. “My God! I just don’t…” He trailed off, then took a deep breath and raised the bottom of the sweat jacket on Sister’s side. He wet it and began cleaning her face.

  “Where are your parents?” he asked not expecting an answer.

  He just wanted a sound, some kind of verbal acknowledgement to let him know that communication had been established.

  As far as the question went, he already knew the answer. Like his mother and everyone else, their parents were almost certainly dead. Otherwise, wouldn’t they have all been together?

  Yet somehow these two babies had survived, like him. It was a miracle.

  He finished cleaning the girl’s face.

  Noticing the boy’s eyes were glued to the bottle in his hand, the man offered it to him.

  The boy hesitated.

  The man gave a demonstration on how to drink from the bottle, and then offered it to the boy again.

  The boy took the bottle, raised it to his mouth and drank. He took several satisfying gulps and lowered the bottle.

  The man took the bottle from the boy and passed it to the girl. She took the bottle of water and drank exactly as the giant had shown her. She finished it and dropped the bottle.

  It was incredible how fast these babies learned.

  The man began to wonder if this might be the result of divine intervention, a sign from God maybe telling him that they were brought together for a purpose.

  Never having children nor ever having experience of babysitting, now he was apparently being asked to restart the human species? It was mind-blowing. He had to sit for a moment.

  Oh, how he wished he could wake up and be fifteen again. Back then, peer pressure had led him to try acid, resulting in a terrifyingly bad trip. He remembered hallucinating like a motherfucker.

  Now he was experiencing an even more bizarre trip, one that imposed itself through an act of Nature, or maybe God. Either way, he couldn’t just abandon these two infants. Not only would that be morally wrong, even if no one was around anymore to judge him, it would also be a lost opportunity. Here was a chance to be the first to restart the human species.

  The idea suddenly became incredibly enticing to him. He had so much to teach and his mother could answer whatever he didn’t know. She may be dead but not her legacy. Weren’t her shelves filled with textbooks on pediatric and early developmental care? And didn’t her filing cabinets and desktop computer contain a prodigious amount of notes and articles documenting her many years in pediatric research?

  The answer was yes.

  “Can you say anything?”

  Brother and Sister said nothing.

  Grinning, the man said, “I know the perfect place for you. We are going to go to a nice big apartment where I can feed you and t
each you all sorts of stuff. How does that sound?”

  Nothing.

  “My mom lives - or lived - right over there,” the giant said pointing. The twins turned around. Then they turned back to him.

  “She was a pediatrician and her work is going to help me take care of you. Okay?”

  At last, the twins smiled, exposing their pointed teeth.

  The man recoiled, fighting an urge to shriek, sucking in air instead. He got to his feet and stepped back.

  The twins’ smiles fell.

  They were a pair of mutants, the man thought with revulsion. Little devils born from one of the afflicted. Somehow the explosion had caused them to change.

  But how could this have happened so quickly? He didn’t know. He was suddenly too terrified to think of anything other than widening the distance between himself and them.

  Brother cocked his head. A combination of hurt and confusion washed over the twins’ faces.

  Seeing this, the man paused. He waited for them to do something, anything. They didn’t. They only gazed at him, crestfallen.

  The man eased but only a little. A thought occurred to him. If the twins wanted to hurt him, they would have already tried. He felt sure of it.

  Also, he had a responsibility to them.

  In his old life, before the world ended, responsibility had always posed a challenge for him. Practical responsibilities, like showing up for work and paying the bills, were fine. He had no problem with those. The problem lay in taking responsibility in his personal life. He had a habit of shying away from people, preferring to keep their status to the level of acquaintance. He had no close friends, and his romantic life was nonexistent. Living was easier when you didn’t have to deal with the wants and needs of others.

  Life of solitude had it downside, too. There were times when loneliness struck his heart like a desert sinkhole falling into a dark abyss. When that happened, he’d try to fill that hole with the dank air and cheap talk in bars, booze and one-night-stands. Only thirty-two years old, he was beginning to feel like eighty-two, and was starting to desire real companionship.

  Sometimes he called his mother. Not often. Unlike him, she had a social life, always keeping busy with friends, traveling or attending some important function or other.

  When she was available, he would enjoy chatting for hours on the phone. He especially enjoyed visiting her, though he hadn’t done it much. She was the only person in the world who truly understood him and he loved her very much. Unfortunately, he could never visit her or talk to her and tell her how much he loved her anymore.

  Now, staring at the twins looking forlorn and wounded, he wondered if he wasn’t being like so many people who would pass judgment on them because of their appearance.

  The time had come to do away with all forms of negativity and to finally show some compassion. The human race depended on it.

  Reinvigorated, the man approached the babies again.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You just threw me off guard for a second.”

  The man sat back down on his haunches. Attempting to show that everything was okay again, that he could be trusted. He smiled and gently caressed Brother’s cheek.

  It worked.

  Brother smiled. At the same time, Sister made cute little gurgly sounds.

  He pinched the ends of the sweat jacket, lifted it off their shoulders and threw it aside. He then folded his arms around the twins, making sure to blanket them inside the trenchcoat, and lifted them.

  Cradling a twin in each arm, he stood, bouncing them playfully. The babies giggled which provided him with another view of their pointed teeth. The man’s smile widened.

  “Yes,” he said, “I am going to take good care of you.”

  He began to walk. “What should I name you? How about Adam and Eve?” He crinkled his nose. “Nah,” he said, “that’s stupid.”

  To the boy, he said. “What if I just call you Fred?”

  Then to the girl, “And you Juliet.”

  Brother and Sister squealed delightfully.

  “Glad you approve,” said the man. “But if you change your mind, we can always give you a different name. Who’s going to care, right?”

  He walked awhile not saying anything, enjoying the twins’ laughing and giggling

  At last, he said, “It’s funny. Your names came to me just like that. Can you believe it?”

  He laughed, and said, “By the way, my name is Tray.”