by Ryan Schow
“Why can’t we stay with you?” Rex asks.
“Because I have company.”
“A boyfriend?” Macy asks with a knowing grin.
“Something like that. Besides, I figure we don’t even know each other, so it’s too soon to start sleeping together.”
“I’m okay with it if you are,” Rex says.
“I’m not,” Indigo replies, not the least bit humored. Ignoring Rex’s antics, looking instead at me and Macy, she says, “At least not yet. It’s a trust thing, really. Plus some really bad things have happened and my guest was privy to them. She had a front row seat, unfortunately, and I’m not inclined to overwhelm her with company.”
“Flashlight?” Stanton asks looking around.
She hands him two flashlights and says, “I’ve got batteries when you run out, but as with everything…conserve.”
“Roger that,” Rex says.
“You guys can settle in tonight and tomorrow, but the day after that we need to pow-wow and figure this thing out. There’s no freeloaders allowed in this new world,” Indigo says, now looking directly at Rex, “even if you’ve been shot. Twice. You have to pull your own weight and then some.”
“We will,” I say.
“You?” Indigo says, looking at me, “I don’t doubt. But him…”
“You’re worried about me?” Rex asks.
“Yes.”
Grinning and looking cute, he says, “Ah, so you care. That’s sweet. I’ll be alright, though. We’ll manage. Thank you for all you’ve done for us.”
“Thanks for having my back,” she grumbles.
Smiling but moving gingerly, Rex says, “Let’s go guys. I’m in favor of the house on the right, all agreed say ‘I.’”
“We’re going to the other house,” Macy says. Me and Stanton agree. “It just looks cleaner.”
“And it’s bigger,” Indigo says. They all look at her one last time. Then: “In time perhaps I’ll invite you over, but for now—especially you, Rex—don’t get any funny ideas. Anyone who comes into my house without an invitation takes a round to the face.”
Me, Stanton and Macy all look at Rex who says, “I’m a fighter not a lover.”
And that’s that.
“Oh, before I forget,” Indigo says. She heads inside, then comes back out a few minutes later and hands me a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a suturing kit, complete with the needle and thirty six inches of absorbable suture. “For Stanton’s head. And maybe Rex’s mouth.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, deeply grateful.
We say good-bye to Indigo and head to the house Rex didn’t choose. If he complains, I’ll tell him he can stay there if he wants, but he doesn’t complain.
As we’re heading back across the way, we make a wide berth around the pile of bones and head through a collapsed section of wood fence leading to the house adjacent to Indigo’s backyard. I try not to look at the soot covered pile of bones, but fail miserably.
“Mom,” Macy says. “When I grow up I want to be like Indigo.”
“Me, too,” I hear myself mumble
“I don’t know about this,” Macy says. The house feels like a tomb. Cold, dark, empty. It’s a house though, and it doesn’t smell like death, rotten food or mold, so that’s a plus.
“Should’ve gone with the other house,” Rex says.
I head around and open the window, drenching the space in light. The hardwood floors are new, but covered in old rugs, and the drapes are heavy to the point of feeling a bit suffocating.
“All you need is a little light,” I say.
Sniffing around the first floor rooms gives me nothing of interest. Meaning no one’s died in here yet. There isn’t old food or dirty plates stacked in the sink, no spoiled milk in the fridge (yet) because it’s a bit barren in there, and the shopping list stuck to the fridge has lots of items on it which tells me this person is clean and responsible, but not rolling in the money.
“They cared about their home,” Stanton says.
“Yeah,” I hear myself say.
Macy heads upstairs with Rex to find their respective bedrooms. I’m praying they realize that no matter what, me and Rex are taking the master.
Or maybe not.
I’m just happy my boys are still alive, and I’m happy me and Stanton are still together. That all of us are together. The backyard fence is half kicked over, the yard mostly dirt and some stacked up garbage along the fence line. It’s not the best view, but it didn’t feel terrible either.
“It’s less nice than I thought,” Stanton says, “but with some grow boxes, some clean dirt and some seeds, we might be able to plant.”
“That’s a bit optimistic,” I say, not meaning to be a buzzkill, but realizing I am anyway. Looking up I say, “Sorry. It’s just…there’s so much more that has to come before that.”
“I know. No sense in being like you though.”
I turn and pull him into an easy hug, burying my face in his neck and telling him how much I love him. He holds me for like forever, and I just want to stay here—in his arms—until our final days, may they not come too soon.
“I miss you,” he says.
“I miss you, too,” I tell him.
It feels like it’s been forever since we’ve held each other like this. It’s almost like our bodies understand this and won’t let go. Then he steps away, leans forward and kisses me on the mouth and I swear it’s like something in my chest opens up again and I can breathe.
When our mouths come apart, I say, “Let me clean your cut, see if we need stitches.”
We head upstairs where there is a long hallway and four bedrooms. Rex and Macy are in rooms next to each other and we’re at the end of the hall. In the master.
I pop my head in and Macy is stretched out on a full sized bed that’s taking up most of the room. There are posters of Japanese anime and a Fight Club poster, the room either a masculine girl’s room, judging by the décor, or a feminine guy’s room. Either way, Macy’s got her shoes off and she’s lying on the bed.
“You’re going to get it dirty,” I say, thinking about the comforter.
“It’s like being on clouds, Mom!” she replies.
“Pretty soon those clouds will just be pillows of dust if you’re not careful.”
Spinning over and burying her face in the sheets, she says, “They smell like summertime.”
Smiling, I leave her to her room. Rex is further down the hall, at the end of the house where there’s a window facing Dirt Alley, and Indigo’s home. He’s standing at the window, his body relaxed but his mind working overtime for sure.
“Stalker to the end,” I say.
He doesn’t even flinch at the sound of my voice, at the subtle suggestion, or offense, depending on how he looks at it.
“If you were a guy,” he asks, not even turning around, “wouldn’t you be, too?”
I think about it and it doesn’t take long for me to answer.
“I suppose so.”
He gives a defeated laugh that’s tortured by longing, or perhaps fatigue. He then turns around with this wondrous light in his eyes and says, “The way she just went to work on those guys, like it didn’t affect her one bit—and how she interrogated the blonde at Walgreen’s—it’s like we were two halves of a whole with perfect lines between us. Like we fit. Like she was that missing thing I didn’t know I wanted until I saw her and decided she was the one.”
“Little brother,” I hear myself saying, sad, careful not to wipe my feet on the platitudes of his mind, “you’re always falling in love with the wrong girls at the wrong time.”
His eyes clear, like his trance is momentarily broken. He licks his lips and says, “I saw a lot of terrible things overseas. We did some…some bad things.” He just stands there, silent and unmoving, the memories in his head having their way with him. “You can’t love anything over there. You don’t want to.”
I want to cross the room, wrap my arms around him. It’s not the right time, th
ough. Whatever his brain is pulling from the past, however horrifying the memories might be, I’ve been around him long enough to let him be in them. His therapist said he needs to stay in them to be able to understand them, and to eventually let them go.
“So when I get back to the states,” he says, “and I see all these beautiful people just living their lives, not trying to kill you, not plotting to kill each other, I think, ‘Well maybe it’s okay to relax, to put your guard down,’ and so I do.”
His eyes start to water, his features bending to the horrors. He’s looking at me, seeing me, yet that’s not exactly true. His eyes aren’t even focused. All he can see are the times and places that ruined him, and all those little traumas he can’t quite to bury.
Then something shifts and he begins to speak. “The second I let my guard down and kept it down, I began to see things differently, all the love that refused to enter my heart just comes flooding forth at once and it’s a bit overpowering.”
The tears drip over and now I can see he’s seeing me. He wipes his eyes as the memories become physical pain.
Now it’s time.
Walking to him, pulling him into the safety of my arms, I tell him the things he needs to hear. “You’re not safe here, but you’re loved. You won’t ever forget those memories, because you can’t, because you won’t, but you’ll make new ones. Maybe they’ll be with us, maybe they will be with other people. But they’ll be new.”
“I like Indigo,” he says, sniffling.
“We all sort of do, but she’s just a girl we didn’t know a few hours ago. She’s cute, good with a bow and her girl balls are gigantic, but she’s damaged, Rex. Something’s not quite right about her.”
“She’s damaged like me,” he whispers.
“Yes.”
“That could be a good thing, right? I mean, we could relate to each other about…you know, the stuff in our lives that happened to us. The stuff we’ve done.”
“It could be the perfect match, or it could be dysfunctional to the point of catastrophic. People who have too much in common—especially when it comes to surviving traumatic events—sometimes they can either heal each other or end up doing irreparable damage to each other.”
He moves away from me, fixes himself and says, “You’re right. It’s best not to take a chance.”
“There are no absolutes,” I tell him, leaving room for hope.
He doesn’t run with it. Instead, he turns and pulls the drapes shut and says, “You’re right. Best to just forget about her.”
“How bad do you think this thing is,” I ask, changing subjects.
“Bad,” he says, his voice flat, completely devoid of emotion. He starts to take off his boots. His socks are in good shape, but one of them has a small hole in the heel that’s bound to get a lot bigger depending on how much walking we’re going to be doing in the days ahead.
“Do you think there’s a fix?”
“A nuclear EMP isn’t a temporary situation,” he says. He wipes his eyes. He’s almost back to normal. “It basically fries the grid and just about anything with a computer chip in it.”
“That’s like half the modern world.”
“Exactly.”
He pulls off his shirt and I turn because I can’t look at all the scars. It only serves to remind me of what happened to him. How he was taken hostage and beaten daily to within an inch of his life.
“I should really look at your head.”
“I’ve been feeling it and it’s mostly just a knot,” he says. “It won’t need stitches.”
“I should really clean it and see for myself,” I tell him.
“When you’re ready,” he says.
A few minutes later I return. He’s laying in bed with the covers over him and his clothes folded in a neat stack. His shoes are placed beside them, neat, organized.
I take a look at where the thugs from the field hit him and it’s indeed a pretty nasty knot. But the cut isn’t deep or wide. I wipe the effected area with a damp cloth, dry it, then spritz the wound with the little brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide Indigo gave me. I know it stings, but he doesn’t move. Blowing on it will help, but he won’t speak to that either. The clear liquid mixes with a bit of blood and I dab the pink tears it’s making with a square of gauze from the suture kit. On closer inspection, the cut seems to be doing fine. It just needs to breathe.
I lean forward, kiss the top of his head, then give the wound a smack because that’s how they do it in the military. He grabs his head and fires me a look.
“Love you little brother.”
“Love you too, sis.”
Stanton is waiting for me when I get in the room. Immediately I walk into a dark room with the blackout drapes pulled shut and a pair of candles burning on the night stands flanking the queen sized bed. There’s plenty of daylight outside, but in here…mood lighting. My mind is suddenly divided between this hell we’re doing our damnest to survive and a romantic interlude with my husband—something neither of us have seen in the better part of a year.
“What’s this?” I ask.
I’m thinking maybe he hit his head a little harder than I realized if what he’s trying to do in the apocalypse is get laid.
But there it is.
Stanton is sitting in bed. Beside the bed is a pile of his dirty clothes. With an anticipatory look on his face and one side of the bed’s comforters pulled open like an invitation.
“Lock the door,” he says.
I do.
“Take off your clothes,” he says.
I take them off, not too slowly, but not in a rush either.
“I’m filthy,” I say, feeling the gunk in my hair, the dryness of my skin, specifically around my eyes and across my forehead.
“That’s the girl I know and love,” he says with a grin.
“No, I mean like, I’m dirty.”
“So we’ll have dirty sex and then we’ll wash each other later. I have two bottles of water with your name on them.”
“Did you save one for yourself?” I ask, playful.
“I did.”
He pats the bed, telling me to come.
As exhausted as I am, as overwhelmed as this day has left me—as these last few weeks have left me—I see the man I fell in love with and I don’t want him to go away again.
So I go to him.
I slide into a the bed where the sheets are cool, but luxurious and soft. The soft cooing that escapes me is the linen’s doing, and the mattresses doing. But after that, all the little noises I make, all the powerful exultations, that’s purely Stanton’s doing.
When we’re done, we just hold each other until it’s time to bathe and maybe try to find something to eat.
Stanton washes me in the tub; I wash him as well. We dry each other off, then try to find some clothes in a closet that’s not ours. There are clothes that are clean, but they’re a bit big. Whatever. We don’t care. At least I don’t care. There was no way I was getting back into the heap of an outfit I left on the floor beside the bed.
Downstairs, we all meet for dinner. It’s tuna and soda crackers. It’s warm Sprite with a freshly opened pack of Oreo’s for dessert.
We don’t say much, other than Macy telling us she loves her room and Rex asking if there are more clean clothes where ours came from.
“Of course,” Stanton says.
“Go pick out an outfit, if you want,” I tell Rex. He seems a bit down, but that’s because he’s still brooding over having to let Indigo go in his mind.
He’ll see her again, though, and maybe he’ll go back to trying to get her, or perhaps he’s not going to engage in the chase. Either way, this side of Rex is as hard to watch as the side of him that’s overly optimistic.
That night I have a hard time sleeping. It’s too quiet. For the last few weeks I’ve loved the quiet, but only because this soft reverence, this burst of peacefulness, is what follows the bombing runs that had been going on all day long almost non-stop.
Now it�
�s only stillness, and silence.
It’s too eerie.
“What do you think we should do with this world?” I ask Stanton in the dark. It must be nearly midnight.
He mumbles something, then rolls over taking a bit of the covers with him. His head wound wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but he’s stubborn sometimes, so it makes sense. I touch the area around the wound, the area I cleaned and stitched up. Laying my hand flat on this head, I move my fingers into his hair.
“I think we should try to clean it up,” I say.
“Me, too,” he says, groggy.
He probably won’t even remember this conversation, and I won’t blame him. I kind of want to do something for this city. Try to put it back together. Try to make it my home despite the many dangers of living here.
The bottom line?
Tomorrow we’ve got to figure out what to do, how to survive in this place. And if we can do that without killing anyone, well then, that would just be fantabulous.
11
It was time. Outside the sun was setting. Already the temperature dropped a few degrees. Rider checked his hair, his teeth and his weapon, and then he took a deep breath and walked down the hall to Sarah’s room.
At her door, he knocked lightly. She opened it a minute later and he drew an involuntary breath.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Wow.” He froze, then realized what he was doing. He was staring. “I mean, you look nice, doc.”
“Sarah,” she said.
She wore a knit hat pulled loosely on a head of sandy brown hair, an attractive mid-length coat, tight jeans and ankle boots. Not exactly walking wear, but just about as beautiful as he’d ever seen.
He smiled and reached for her hand. She took it, closing and locking the door behind her. It was strange holding her hand, but he wanted to and she didn’t grow tense under his grip. He looked at her as they strolled through the dim halls, then she looked up at him and said, “I like the way you look, too, Rider. How are your wounds?”