Awake

by Fernando Iglesias Meléndez

  Gerardo looks at his shoes as if pondering whether to remove them or not for a moment, but then he keeps walking. Diana kneels and takes hers off, pausing to make the sign of the cross on her forehead to signify her reverence upon entrance into the house of the Lord.

  Edu steps over her, indifferent to the silent rituals of the poor and the desperate. There’d been millions upon millions of prayers since this began. Around the world. Day and night. There had been people who gave their lives to it, praying without eating and without stopping to rest. Idiots. They thought that their monk-like devotion would work, that their sacrifice would undo the invisible blight that contaminated them all with Insomnia.

  And guess what? They died. They were awake and in the high and mighty trance of prayer he hated so much and the next moment they were on the ground, gasping and clutching their chest as their heart buckled and seized up and failed. God, if He even existed, looked down upon them and did nothing. Changed nothing.

  Babies died in the first days, followed soon by children and the elderly. ‘So fuck Him,’ Edu thinks. He steps over Diana, walking into the church proper, eyes narrow with hatred.

  Gabo stays behind, not dropping to kneel beside Diana, but removing his shoes and waiting for her to finish regardless. Like every time Diana prayed or dropped into the comforting blanket of faith, he stands at the threshold of belief and refuge. He feels it call out to him, something inside him yearning to be a part of her world of beautiful certainty, but feeling unable to partake. He doesn’t know if he believes in God, didn't know before, and sure as shit doesn't know now. But the way this had affected everyone equally and all at once, that makes him think that there’s something more, something out there that had done this to them. He just doesn’t want to pray to whatever that was.

  Further ahead, bodies lie on the soft surfaces. Their eyes stare at the ceiling or at the cold, unfeeling eyes of the statues around them. You’d be forgiven for thinking that they’re dead, but their uneasy breaths and their whimpering betrays the fact that they’re still alive. Saints and angels rendered in stained glass peer sadly at Gerardo, Edu, Gabo, and Diana as they walk on.

  The group steps over men and women lying under tangled blankets. Pained moans and hushed prayers fill the air. The room has the atmosphere of a battlefield hospital…one belonging to the losing side.

  Gerardo walks past the last of the makeshift beds and the others follow him into the church proper. The cushioned floor gives way to cold linoleum, and dimmed lights give way to bright fluorescents.

  ◆◆◆

  It’s a city inside of a church: sheets hang down from the walls, making tents. The pews are stacked haphazardly everywhere, some modified into beds. The confessional booths lining one of the walls are being used to store food.

  The altar has been smothered with blankets and sleeping bags, each plugged with a breathing and groaning body. A massive crucifix looms over the altar, large enough to be seen from the foyer, where most of the tired flock has collapsed. Jesus Christ’s eyes have been painted over to look like they’re shut, to look like He’s sleeping. A young girl kneels under Him. She’s the only kid in sight…as a matter of fact, she’s the first kid Gerardo and the others have seen all morning. Gerardo frowns at this.

  Some people thought that the children would outlast the adults, probably because kids are more lively and energetic. But their tiny bodies are fragile. It only takes a few consecutive days without sleep to snuff them out. Seeing one now, ninety days into the Insomnia, was like seeing a child walking through a strip club or a war zone. They were out of place and therefore they were suspicious and potentially dangerous. They had no business being alive this long, not unless their parents had given them every sleeping pill they had at the expense of their own lives to spare theirs. Or unless they belonged to someone else, someone who was giving them a steady supply of pills in exchange for them being any number of things ranging from a spy to a mule to the unthinkable.

  So either the kid’s a lost puppy or she’s bait, and Gerardo doesn’t need the trouble of either option. He moves on, leaving the problem for the fools and the Faithful.

  Diana gravitates toward the altar, rosary in hand.

  “Come on, let’s get this done quick,” Gerardo says.

  Edu nods. Gerardo and the others walk past the confessionals. On the way, they pass tents with signs labeled, ‘LISTENING SPACES.’ People lie inside wearing headphones. Gabo eyes them and Gerardo chuckles. The kid wasn’t the only one who’d figured out that music helped pass the painful waking hours.

  Past them, baggy-eyed vendors stoop over boxes of coffee and beer. A sign reads, ‘NO SLEEPING PILLS, CAFFEINE PILLS $25 A POP.’

  Gerardo and the group head toward a massive, white tent, lit up by Christmas lights. A sign over it reads, ‘PRIEST.’ A little basic, but, when the people reading your sign have the mental capacity of a stoner with a heavy concussion, you gotta make things as clear and easy as possible. Gerardo enters, but Gabo and Edu remain outside.

  THREE

  Gabo fiddles with his CD player, eyes drifting toward the listening spaces again, there’s a shelf next to them with stacks of CDs and their price. Dirt cheap. Not much use for them anymore unless you were an audiophile like Gabo. A freak, as Edu put it, who’d rather listen to music than get drunk or high. Now booze? That shit, Edu often said, works every time.

  Right on cue, Edu spots a table with several bottles of liquor and strolls toward it. Everyone has a coping mechanism. With your body constantly in pain, you had to have one or you’d drop like a Lazy. Shit, you’d drop like one eventually, but not as fast. And, like The Last Voice said, you should make your last days feel like a party.

  ◆◆◆

  Gerardo walks inside what’s practically a small circus tent. There’s a desk in one corner of the improvised room, along with a television and a bookshelf filled with books on religion and faith...as well as a hefty collection of science fiction novels. Father Jaime sits cross-legged on the blanket-padded floor. A worn cassock is draped over his thin, yet fit body. He sweeps long, graying locks out of his eyes. He’s an older, handsome gentleman. That was why his services were full of housewives and grandmas. He used to be like the priest in a Mexican telenovela, always cool, always right, always there to remind you to lay off the wine, or stop shouting at your kids, and follow God’s plan, which always somehow led to your own happiness.

  Well, that was then. Now he’s drinking whiskey from a plastic cup and smoking a cigarette inside a church. There are several empty bottles of all kinds of liquor arranged around him in a circle, along with a Bible and the latest newspapers. They were old things, but they were the only ones left. They stopped printing newspapers a week after the First Sleepless Night, and most of them still spoke of the Insomnia as a ridiculous but terrifying new plague, without the resolved cynicism that had set in soon after. There was a sense of entitlement to those headlines that Gerardo hated, ‘this is outrageous,’ they seemed to say, ‘someone has to do something.’ But no one had. No one could. There was nothing to do except stock up on guns and pills and hope you were more prepared than the next guy.

  Jaime’s standing with his back to the desk but Gerardo can tell that what he’s really doing is leaning against it to prop himself up. He bets that if that weren’t there, the Father would collapse under his own cursed weight. He doesn’t have much time left. People used to donate whatever pill rations the gringos had given them to the church…but that was a long time ago. Whatever stash Jaime once had was probably long gone, like the gringos and the one-tenth active ingredient sleeping pills they airdropped from ‘more fortunate lands.’ Now there were no more fortunate lands, there were only hellholes filled with whatever flavor of Red Eye your country spawned.

  As Gerardo enters, Jaime stands up straight, smiling and pulling him into a warm hug.

  “Gerardo! Good to have you back!”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  Jaime looks behind Gerardo expectantl
y, but there’s no one there. He frowns, his bloodshot eyes blinking with confusion.

  “Where’s Diego?”

  Gerardo cringes at the name as if it were something sharp. “He…didn’t make it,” he finally says.

  “What? Oh God. I’m so sorry. I…come here,” Jaime moves to give Gerardo another hug but Gerardo holds up a hand. Jaime smiles and gives him his space.

  “We’re coming up on ninety days,” Jaime says, changing the subject. “It’s been tough on everyone. More than tough. It’s been hell. It looks like God didn’t take the Insomnia back after all.”

  “That implies He did it on purpose. What kind of God would do this to His people?” Gerardo asks.

  “The same one that flooded the world and sent plagues upon Egypt. He has His reasons,” Jaime says.

  “Pardon my language, Father, but fuck that. There are dead kids out there, families putting bullets through their heads to put each other out of their misery,” Gerardo says. His voice is venom, sounding ugly and hurt, especially in a place like this.

  “I didn’t say I agreed with His reasons, Gerardo. I just said that He had them. Now, what can I do for you?”

  Gerardo sighs, looking at the newspapers on Jaime’s floor. The first headline reads, ‘ASIA STRUCK WITH INEXPLICABLE BOUT OF INSOMNIA.’ The next issue, right next to it, reads, ‘INSOMNIA REPORTED WORLDWIDE, DID YOU SLEEP LAST NIGHT?’ The last issue in Jaime’s collection reads, ‘U.S. OFFERS CITIZENSHIP TO VERIFIED SLEEPERS.’ Gerardo remembers that one. Rumor had it that the Americans had just herded anyone who said they could sleep into some government facility to be tested on and ultimately dissected. True or not, he never heard of anyone who left coming back.

  “I’m taking my crew to a Pill Haven in Guatemala,” Gerardo says, “but we’re short on the entry fee. I was hoping you could tell me where I can sell my goods.”

  “What kind of goods?” Jaime asks.

  “You know…guns. Gear.”

  “How short are you?”

  "Seventeen grand,” Gerardo sighs.

  “That’s a lot of guns and gear,” Jaime says, “but you could try the Last Pharmacy.”

  “That’s inside Red Eye turf. No way that guy’s still alive.”

  “Well, I’d tell you to go to another pharmacy, but you wiped out most of the others. Forgive my asking, but, if you had so many pills at the start, why are you trying to get into the Haven?”

  Gerardo looks away, shame dancing over his tired features. He isn’t just ashamed of having lost the stash and his crew’s chance of getting through this alive. He’s ashamed of what he’d done to get the pills in the first place. Fragmented, half-repressed memories: the owner of a pharmacy and his family pleading for their lives, Gerardo and Edu dumping boxes of sleeping pills into their duffel bags, a man clutching a ziplock bag filled with capsules with a jagged hole erasing half his face.

  “I see,” Father Jaime says, “you lost them, didn’t you? Well, I bet the guy at the Last Pharmacy would love some of what you’re actually selling.” A protest starts in Gerardo’s throat, but Jaime raises a hand and kills it before it can get out, “I'm a priest, not a saint. I know how much drugs are worth."

  Gerardo smiles, relief sneaking into his hardened features, if only for a moment. “Alright, thank you, Father. I knew I could count on you.”

  “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. I know things, but they’re out of date. People used to talk to me, now they don’t say much except that they’re scared and that they’re doubting whether they’ll get to heaven.”

  “And what do you tell them?”

  “That they will. That this is a test and that they passed, regardless of what they did. God took their sleep away to give them a better rest and beautiful dreams in the afterlife.”

  “Do you believe that? That we’ll all still go to heaven?”

  “Whatever happens, I believe we’ll all get to sleep again, one way or the other.”

  Gerardo goes to step out, but Jaime stops him. “You did something, didn’t you?”

  “What?” Gerardo feigns confusion, but his eyes dart away. He’s suddenly unable to look into Jaime’s eyes, like they’re the sun itself. He can already feel his own eyes watering. If he looks into Jaime’s, he’ll break down, it’ll all come loose like a burst dam of tears and sorrow and vulnerability that he hasn’t felt in decades. So he won’t look.

  “I’ve known you since you were a boy. You wore that same face when your mother forced you to come to confession. What did you do?”

  Gerardo’s breathing is labored. There’s a confession booth on the far end of the tent. Gerardo’s gaze drifts toward it. But he grits his teeth, narrows his eyes, and faces Jaime with steely resolve. The pain and doubt on his face are gone. His eyes are bone dry.

  “I didn't fucking do anything. Alright?” He says, almost shouting. But he stops short. He’s in a church, talking to a priest, and an old friend, after all.

  “It’s alright, Gerardo. You’re a good man. Go with God, my son.”

  These words anger Gerardo further. He practically punches the tent flaps open. Father Jaime stares at him regretfully.

  ◆◆◆

  Gerardo and Edu walk up to Gloria. Diana and Gabo sit in the open trailer. They guard the truck, their rifles scanning the surroundings.

  “Let’s move,” Gerardo says, hopping into the driver’s seat.

  Diana’s eye catches the girl from the altar walking up to Gloria. Her face is a mask of almost zen-like confidence, but her erratic movements hint at the urgency of someone on a life or death mission. It’s a look that should never be on someone so young, a look of back-breaking responsibility.

  Her hair’s cut short, down to the bottom of her ears. She’s wearing an oversized flannel shirt and jeans, and hiking boots that are so big they’re almost like clown shoes on her. Diana smirks at the fact that she’s basically wearing what Gerardo is, if you substitute her flannel shirt for his bloody denim one.

  The girl walks right up to the open driver’s door, locking eyes with Gerardo. There’s something in her gaze, a mysterious glint suggesting there’s more going on with her than meets the eye. She puts out her hand for Gerardo to shake. It doesn’t tremble, it's as steady as the metal that makes up Gloria.

  “Hi. I’m Anita,” she says, calmly, coolly. “Is this your truck?”

  “What’s it to you? Scram. These wheels are dangerous,” Gerardo growls.

  “Take me with you,” Anita says. Not a demand, but not a plea either.

  “Oh sure, by all means, climb aboard, your majesty! Edu, you believe this kid?”

  “I can pay you,” she says, with the confidence that only comes from telling the truth, “if you take me to the Sleeping Place.”

  Gerardo laughs, it’s an ugly, desperate sound, out of practice and wonky from disuse. “Oh, you’re one of the Faithful. Then you should know that nobody knows where the Sleeping Place is. So get—”

  “I do.” Anita meets Gerardo’s gaze. Unflinching. Studying him.

  “Oh? Lemme guess. It’s a dead-end somewhere, right? And when I take you there, your people, who aren’t even the Faithful, will jump us and take our truck? Probably string us up from a street light too. I get that right?”

  “You can trust me.”

  “Yeah, I can trust you’ll fuck me over like every nut in this city. Get. Lost.”

  “I saw it,” Anita says, her voice calm and almost dreamlike, like she’s half asleep. “In my dreams. I drew it and we found it. I can show you on a map.”

  Diana’s eyes light up. She’s in the presence of a miracle, or someone claiming to be one. She looks at Anita with new eyes.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Gerardo mutters, hopping out of his seat. He scoops Anita up by the armpits like a toddler and carries her back to the church steps.

  “What? What’re you—put me down!” Anita shouts.

  “Sorry, I don’t have time for make-believe nonsense. We’re on the clock,” Gerardo says.
He drops Anita on the ground, then turns to walk back to Gloria. He gets in the driver’s seat and twists the ignition. Gloria purrs to life. He steps on the gas, moving Gloria forward slowly as he turns the wheel and moves back onto the street…just as Anita runs out in front of Gloria’s grill.

  "Shit! Look out!” Edu shouts from the passenger seat.

  Gerardo slams on the brakes. Gloria skids to a halt just inches from Anita’s face, the chrome of her grill practically caressing one of the girl’s cheeks. Gerardo rubs his reddened eyes. His hands are shaking. He manages to lift furious eyes to look at a terrified Anita. For a brief moment, Anita’s face morphs into the Pale Man’s. Gerardo blinks profusely until Anita’s face is back to normal.

  Diana and Gabo rush out of the trailer. Diana wraps her arms around Anita, looking at Gerardo like he’s the devil himself. “Jesus Christ, Gerardo!” she shouts, “what the fuck is wrong with you? You gonna start killin’ kids now too?”

  Anita trembles in Diana’s arms.

  “You alright, sweetheart?” Diana asks.

  “Diana, get in the back,” Gerardo says.

  “What? Why?”

  “We have to go.”

  “At least apologize to her! You could’ve—”

  “We have to fucking go!” Gerardo shouts, “the hours we’ve been awake are gonna start piling up and pretty soon you won’t be able to move, much less lift that little pest up.”

  Diana addresses Edu and Gabo as if speaking to a jury, “why are we still letting this basket case drive?”

  “He’s always driven. End of discussion,” Edu says.

  “Gabo?” Diana asks, almost begging him for the right response.

  “He was…he’s our boss,” Gabo says, almost whispering.