by Samie Sands
No, there’s no rescue coming, we’re on our own, and children are now more important than ever.
Hoping that Jemma isn’t watching me, I smash the crowbar onto the kid’s head, causing his brains to splatter everywhere. It’s a bloodbath as his broken, destroyed body slumps to the ground. Black clumps of flesh fall down my glasses, I can feel bits of him clinging to my beard, he’s splattered everywhere, all over the ground beneath my feet. It’s disgusting, but just a part of real life these days.
“Can I come out now?” Jemma eventually cries from wherever she is.
I sigh deeply, hating that she’s going to see me in this way when she already has so much on her plate, but I force my head to nod. “Yes, you come out. I’ll get rid of...this. Just be careful where you go.”
As I toss the body carelessly out the door, towards the other end of the street, I recall how busy this area used to be. If I close my eyes for just a second, I can almost hear the constant roar of car engines, the chatter of groups of people out enjoying the wonderful Australian sun, life buzzing past.
I miss that, I miss it more than I ever thought I would. Maybe I wasn’t the most sociable person in normal life, maybe I mostly kept to myself, but I miss watching other people living.
The groan of one of the monsters coming from my left-hand side is a stark reminder that life in that manner isn’t coming back, not soon anyway.
“Are you okay?” I call out as I’m safe back inside. “Jemma?”
When she doesn’t answer, a tight ball of stress knots around my heart, one that strangles my lungs just a little bit. I suck in air, trying to keep myself breathing steadily, but luckily before the panic becomes too much her face comes into view.
“Hey, Luke, I’ve just found a maternity store. I can finally wear comfortable clothing for the first time since I’ve had this damn ankle-biter growing inside of me.”
I let out a laugh, but the sound is much too strained for my liking. The stress is still there, bothering my organs, reminding me that I have responsibilities weighing on my shoulders now. “Well, that’s good news.”
“I’m just going to grab what I can, I’ll be back in a minute.”
While I wait for Jemma to come back to me, I wander around the shopping center, diving in from store-to-store. I tell myself that I’m looking for supplies, that I’m trying to find me and Jemma something to eat, but really I’m checking that there’s nothing else lurking around. I don’t want to be shocked.
Unsurprisingly, I do stumble across just the one, but she’s trapped under a bookshelf. She doesn’t provide any immediate threat to us, but I put her out of her misery anyway because it’s the right thing to do.
“Luke, where are you? I found some tinned food, do you know how to open it? I’m absolutely starving!”
Now that I can do.
“Coming!”
***
We settle into a nice routine over the next few days, exploring the center, discovering all the building’s secrets, creating an area that almost feels a little bit like home…sort of. It’s easy to make beds and chairs when there are stores selling everything you could possibly want.
“You know, it’d be pretty cool if we could actually turn the television on!” Jemma jokes, which causes my head to snap up from the book I’m buried in.
“You’re the one who wanted it set up like your living room at home,” I smirk. “It’s not my fault that’s a massive waste of the limited power we have. Plus, you know, I doubt anything’s being broadcast right now.”
I’ve actually managed to find access to some electricity, but it isn’t much, it definitely won’t last us, and we have another event looming soon that’ll need all we have.
“What’cha reading there?” She grabs the hardback from me before I can even begin to explain myself. “A pregnancy book?” Her face pales as she stares up at me with utter confusion plastered across her face. “Why are you reading this?”
“Well, I mean, you’re going to be giving birth soon.” My face is actually heating up, like I’m embarrassed about what I’m saying which I know it utterly bizarre. “I figure that since I’m going to be your unwelcome birthing partner, slash midwife, I should know at least a little bit of what I’m doing.”
She stands up and moves behind her chair, where she clutches onto it as if it’s the only thing holding her upright. “Of course, the baby. I guess I’ve been pregnant for so long that I forgot there was going to be a baby at the end of it.” A wooziness crosses her expression that has me leaping up to hold onto her. She grips her fingers tightly into my arm, piercing my skin just a little bit. “What am I going to do with a baby?”
“You must have thought about this stuff...”
“Yes, hypothetically. But now...oh my God, now this is going to be real. How am I going to give birth? In here? There’s nothing here to care of me, no medical equipment, no...oh no this is too much.”
“I’m here, I’m here to take care of you. You don’t have to worry about anything. I will make sure that you’re safe.”
She looks up at me with big blue eyes, panic etched into her face. “Will you? Can you? Oh hell, I feel sick. I thought the puking days were over...”
It takes me a while to calm her down enough to start acting normally again, but as soon as she’s sitting, breathing steadily, with a little bit of color in her cheeks, I start on my next plan of action.
“Right, well I’m going to head to the hospital, get everything you need...”
“What, now?”
“Yes, I think we’ve established that we need to be more prepared, don’t you? There’s only so much I can learn from books, now we need...what’s wrong?”
She clutches onto her stomach, her face turning all the way to purple. “I...I don’t know, but it hurts.”
“Contraction,” I whisper to myself. “That means...” It could be a false one, that does happen according to what I’ve read, but I can’t be totally certain about that, it’s very possible that I’ve already left it far too late. “Okay, I need to go right now.” Maybe if I run, if everything goes smoothly, I’ll be back before things get too real. It can take a long time. Birth isn’t an instant thing…I don’t think.
“No,” Jemma gasps. “No, don’t go. I need you.”
“But you’ll be okay, I have time.”
“No you don’t, you can’t leave me now. The pain is too much.” Her face confirms this as it twists into an ugly, agonized shape. She grabs onto her thighs so tightly that her knuckles turn a terrible shade of white.
Maybe there isn’t enough time.
“Right.” I nod, determination flooding me. There isn’t anyone else around, there’s no point in worrying about what I should’ve done, what I might need, the time is upon me. I just need to make best of what I have. I need to ensure this works. “Right, okay, so what should I do?”
“Water, I need water.” I grab one of the bottles and hand it to her. “Thanks, okay now...now just talk to me. I need to be distracted.”
“Right, okay, sure.” Distraction, that is one of the things that needs to be done during contractions. “So, what do you want to talk to me about?”
“Everything, anything.”
“Tell me about you.” If she needs distraction, then maybe she should be the one who talks.
“Okay, well before the apocalypse I worked in a nursing home. It was okay I guess but...argh God!” I reach my hand out to her and she takes it to squeeze. She causes me pain, but it’s nowhere near what I’m sure she’s going through. “Anyway, it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my education.”
“What did you want to do?”
I’m only half-listening to her story as I run my eyes all over her, checking her, trying to anticipate her needs before she has to vocalize them. Stress balls in my chest, there isn’t any way I’d be able to get through something like this without it bugging me, but there’s a strong sense of calm there too. It’s almost as if my body knows that I need to take charge.
“I wanted to be a lawyer, or something. Stupid, I was probably not clever enough. Maybe this mess saved me from my unfulfilled dreams.” She cackles, but there isn’t any mirth there. “And of course I had Tex.” A pause fills the air, one that I don’t know how to fill. “Damn it, Tex, why did you have to die? You got me in this mess, you should be here to help get me out of it.”
“I’m sure he’s watching over you.”
“Oh, what a crock. He’s monster food, dead, gone.”
“Do you really believe that?” I’ve never been spiritual myself, but if there was ever a time to contemplate stuff like that, it’s now.
“I dunno, it’s just easier I suppose. If I think about him watching over me, I’ll get all sad and there’s no point in that. What can we do these days? There isn’t any time to be heartbroken, we just have to keep on surviving.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
We share a knowing smile, and in that moment I can see she’s glad to have me around. I’m sure she wasn’t at first, her idea of a hero probably wasn’t me, but now having anyone is better than being alone. This might’ve killed her if she had to do it by herself, at least now I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen no matter what.
“So, yeah, me and Tex got swept away in the group of people who set up camp a couple of kilometers away from here.” The group that somehow managed to miss me. “And I figured we’d wait it out until help came. By the time I noticed I’d piled on a ton of weight, it was obvious that help didn’t exist. So, I had to get used to the idea that my baby was going to grow up in,” she indicates wildly around her. “This.”
“You’ll be fine.” I grip her fingers tighter between mine. “I don’t know how we’re going to get through this, but we will.”
“This isn’t your mess,” she shoots back kindly. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me so far, but I don’t expect you to stick around forever.”
“Oh, nonsense. Of course, I’m going to stick around. This world is ugly, it’s a nightmare. None of us knows what’s going to happen, if the human race will even survive. But I do know that a baby is a blessing, and we need to pull together to ensure that your baby has the best life possible.”
Tears unexpectedly cascade down her, usually tough-as-nails, cheeks, so I pull her in for a hug. Jemma is like my family now, like the daughter I never had, and I intend to do everything that I can to protect her and the baby from everything going on out there.
“Oh God, this hurts. So freaking much. And it’s getting worse.”
“So, what was Tex like?” Keep on distracting, that’s all I can do. Without any pain killers, there’s no other option.
“Sweet, tall, handsome. Oh crikey! I met him in school, and I adored him from the very first time I laid eyes on him. I hope...argh! I hope our baby is just like him. He’s the good one. I’m the useless one, you know?”
“Well, I don’t know Tex, I never had the privilege of meeting him, but I do know you, and you’re not useless.”
“Oh God, I can’t be distracted anymore. It’s too much. The baby...I think the baby is coming now.”
***
Blood...no one ever warns you how much blood they’ll be when someone gives birth. Blood, and a whole bunch of other things I don’t want to even look at.
Sweat drips from my forehead, my body is weary and aching, I feel like I’ve been punched all over, like I’ve been in the worst fight of my life and I’ve only just survived...
But it’s all worth it.
“What...what are you going to call him?” Jemma might be exhausted, drained, and in a state, but I can barely breathe either. I’ve been through the ringer as well.
“Tex.” The look in her eyes is pure, boundless love. She’s cradling her little one, holding him close to her chest like he’s precious, made of china, and her baby stares back at her with equal adoration. They know each other, he might be new to me but they’ve been connected for nine months, and that shows. “Like his daddy.”
Is that...can I feel tears now in my eyes too? I never typically cry, but this is something else. This is a new start. It’s in the worst possible place, yet still it’s gorgeous.
“Will you hold him?” Jemma looks up at me and indicates towards little Tex. “Just for a moment, I need to see if I can still stand.”
“You...would trust me?” I haven’t ever held a baby before, but I haven’t ever felt connected to one either. This baby isn’t mine, but he holds a piece of my heart in his tiny little fingers.
“Of course,” she giggles a little too brightly for someone who’s just experienced an inhuman pain only moments before. “You protected me and Tex, you brought us this far. We never would’ve survived this far if it hadn’t been for you. I would’ve remained in that damn car until I died.”
“No, I’m sure...”
“Please, just hold Tex, just for a moment. Remember you said you were going to be there to help me? Well, you’re going to have to start now.”
I lean down and she piles Baby Tex into my arms, which makes my heart swell with utter joy. Life is meaningless without moments like this, this is what makes everything worth it. This is what I need to make existing feel worthwhile once more.
I will do whatever I can, I’m even more determined than before. I will give my life for Jemma and Tex, I will make sure that they live.
Somehow.
cape town
Movie Transcript
NB: I have included a transcript in with the filmstrip in case parts of it don’t survive.
Scene One
The camera pans around, looking at the wasteland before me. The endless dead, yellowed grass, and rubble from some unfinished building scatter in view. It’s clear just from this one shot that the world is not in a good place. I’m silent, waiting for a reaction to stir in the audience. I already know that this movie will be a blockbuster, simply because I don’t think there’s anyone around with access to the technology that I have, but I wait for the viewers to figure the monumental sights I’m showing them, out for themselves.
Finally, the camera spins right around until it finds my face.
“Hello, my name is Derek Pillay, I’m thirty-one years old, and I’m here to present to you what life in the apocalypse is really like. I would like this movie to be named Dooies—just in case I don’t make it, although I fully intend to—and I think it’ll be one of a kind.”
The camera moves behind me to show all the equipment I own. My face vanishes and I become a voice-over.
“I’ve always wanted to make films about real life, just like this one, but I haven’t yet had my big break. I’ve gathered up all the equipment I could possibly need along the way, but the opportunity simply hasn’t happened just yet. It’s just lucky for me now that I have a generator which I can use to charge up the camera batteries. It’s power I could possibly use for other things to help me get by, but I’d rather sacrifice all of that to capture this. This really is once in a lifetime stuff, I’d have to be stupid not to go for it.”
I move now, through the barren land surrounding my home. I never had a lot, but I think the scarcity of the shot highlights how bad things have become. A homemade wall emerges, with wooden spikes sticking through it.
“I had the concrete ready anyway, building a wall around my property was on my to-do list forever, but I just never quite got around to it. Then this hit, so I had to. Luckily, because I’d escaped a number of infected right in the center of Cape Town, I knew what to expect, so I created the wooden dooies-catchers at the same time.”
I lift the camera up over the wall to show two of the infected impaled up against the wall. One of them got spiked through the head, so slumps there motionless, but the other one glances up and growls and groans.
“As you can see, once a human becomes infected they stop being...well, human, I suppose. Their skin turns gray, they lose their eyes, they no longer communicate. All they care about is food. This is something discussed in Hai
tian folklore, that no one took seriously.”
I spin the camera back around to face me, my expression is determined and fierce.
“Well, I bet they’re listening now.”
I perch the camera on a ledge on the outside of my home, angling it towards me so the viewer can see what’s about to happen next. I slowly and purposely pick through all my weapons, examining them thoughtfully as I go.
This part is all for show, I know what I want to do but my aim is to keep the viewer intrigued.
“Luckily, I’ve always lived quite far from civilization because I’ve been a bit of a loner my whole life. I live off the land as much as I can, making a living doing this-and-that, so I’m pretty stocked up when it comes to supplies. Not everyone was so lucky.”
I step back and hold onto the gate, trying to amp up the drama a little. If I ever get to the editing stage of development I might add some eerie music or something.
“Not everyone is strong enough to survive this.”
I fling open my gate and one of them bursts through. He’s ferocious, baring his teeth at me, snarling and reaching out to grab my skin. I act tough, so the audience knows that I have this in the bag. I’m clutching an axe tightly between my fingers, and with one swift movement I slam it down into his head, breaking his skull.
He slumps to the ground, dead and defeated.
“I am, which is why I’m the right person to bring you this film.”
I step towards the camera and flick it off. This part is just the introduction. Maybe the people watching will have been through the apocalypse too, but maybe not. At this point, anything could happen in the future, so I want the viewers to know exactly how the infected were, and how it was possible to beat them.