Awake

by Fernando Iglesias Meléndez

  They planned for this. He planned for it. Gloria can take this and more, but exactly how much more remains to be seen. They had welded half a dozen sheets of metal to the grill, adding rebar to create a cage that could ram the scores of abandoned cars that littered the streets. He’d considered reinforcing the panels that made up Gloria’s body in the same way, but the weight had been a concern. Now, looking at the dents, the scrapes, the punctures, Gerardo’s starting to see how unprepared they are, not just about Gloria, but about the whole fucking thing.

  Take the pills, for example. Why did he give Diego the combination? He knew the answer to that. It was stupid, but there was some reasoning behind it: accountability. If only he knew the combination, he would have been tempted to double-dip and triple dip his doses and lie about how many pills were left. These days, the line between temptation and action was wearing disturbingly thin.

  If the Insomnia had never happened, Gerardo would have been an all right man. Not great, not even good, but not a monster either. He’d never killed anyone, even when he ran with the boys on the street. He’d robbed, sure, but who was counting that? But now? Now he couldn’t bear to remember what he’d done after that First Sleepless Night. It was a blur of impulse and doomsday conviction…a gamble between ensuring his survival if this was permanent and a life behind bars if it wasn’t.

  It’d paid off, but he still had nightmares about bloody pharmacy shelves and Diana begging him to stop. But even then, even during those furious, carnage-filled days, when his belief that this was the fucking end times…he’d never have believed that the Red Eyes would last very long. Or anyone else, for that matter. Only him. Only him because he was willing to do whatever it took to survive.

  Whatever. It’s all done now. No way out but through. Gloria’s fine, they just have to check if anything important’s punctured, but they’d covered most of that in tarp or metal anyway. Keep moving, keep ticking boxes, keep covering ground, and the weight of everything behind his eyes might not be so obvious.

  ◆◆◆

  Anita sits in the trailer. Her head’s in her hands. She’s crying, and hates the fact that she is. It wracks her body, grief shaking her to her core. She used to pride herself on the fact that she’s not just a kid. She’d only heard that word with something else in front of it. ‘Anita’s a sweet kid,’ ‘she’s a smart kid,’ ‘she’s a special kid,’ ‘she’s a miracle kid.’ Now she is just a kid, one who had already lost her parents and has just lost her grandmother. She is an orphan kid, a goddamned abandoned kid, a good-as-dead kid.

  Gabo leans over her awkwardly. ‘This is the story of my life,’ he thinks. He knows something’s wrong, knows he should do something, but knows he’ll mess it up at the same time. “Hey, are you okay? Want me to get Diana?” he asks.

  “My grandmother’s dead,” Anita says, deadpan, monotonous, grief having sucked out all emotion and all energy from her bright eyes and her cheery voice. She’s looking and sounding as tired as the adults are under the Insomnia.

  “Crap,” Gabo says, at a loss for what else to say. His bag of verbal tricks is shallow in most situations, but having to comfort a grieving child has got to be the toughest. “I’m sorry. My grandma died too, before, I mean.” Great. That’ll cheer her up, knowing that Gabo’s grandmother died of natural causes in a sane world will make her feel better. So he reaches deeper and decides to add something more relevant, more vulnerable. Maybe knowing what he’s scared of, what he’s dealing with, will help her out a little. “And I don’t know where my parents are...they’re probably dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Anita says, looking up at him for the first time. Gabo’s probably nineteen, but to her, he looks far younger. He acts younger too. She’s seen the way the others look out for him, try to shield him, ease the frustration out of their voices when they address him. He’s the kid in the group. Even with Anita in it.

  Gabo smiles and pats her on the head, then stops, painfully awkward. Anita chuckles at him.

  ◆◆◆

  Gerardo grabs his handgun off the seat, then pulls an arrow out of one of Gloria’s tires, recoiling as he does so. The arrow reeks. A recognizable stench, sharp enough to singe his nostrils, sweet and sour and vile all at once. Piss. The rumors about the arrows are true. Hopefully, the ones about the spears and the bullets aren’t.

  “Okay. Now what?” Diana asks.

  “I don’t know,” Gerardo says, dipping his hand in a nearby puddle. “Back to the Heart or the Café. Try to sell the morphine.”

  “The Café got hit! And Father Jaime doesn’t buy drugs, remember?” Diana spouts.

  “Do you even know what morphine is?” Gerardo asks, getting in her face.

  “Yeah, I do, and if you think anyone will use it as medicine and not to sleep, you’re dumber than you look,” Diana says.

  “I’ve got a plan,” Anita says, standing directly behind Gerardo now.

  “Stowaways don’t get to have plans,” he says.

  “I know a place where you can sell the morphine,” Anita says.

  “Uh-huh. Where?”

  “The Faithful hideout.”

  Before Gerardo can scoff, Diana steps up to him, her body relaxed, her voice perfectly diplomatic. “They could use morphine if they’re making the trip to the Sleeping Place.”

  “You just want us to go cuz you’re one of the fucking Faithful, and we all know it,” Edu says.

  “And what do you suggest? Huh?” Diana asks. Edu’s response is a glare. “That’s what I thought. You don’t contribute anythin', you’re just a drunk fuckin' loser.”

  Edu makes a move to charge at Diana, but Gerardo shoves him back. Gerardo looks from Diana to Anita. “I can take the morphine almost anywhere else. Why would I take it to your people?” he asks.

  “They’ll pay you for it. And for taking care of me. Lorena’s got a code of honor.”

  Gerardo shakes his head, a cynical smile twisting his lips.

  “I’ve been to the Heart,” Anita says, standing and meeting Gerardo’s cold gaze. It’s a gaze like a machete blade and she doesn’t care if she gets cut. “Nobody’ll pay you upwards of a grand for it there. You need way more for your tickets. The Faithful have enough. If they don’t, they’ll know someone who does. You don’t have another choice. You’ve gotta take me there.”

  “Where is it?” Gerardo asks.

  ◆◆◆

  Inside Gloria, Edu collapses into the passenger’s seat. Furious and tired in equal measures. Something makes him look at the ground in front of the driver’s seat...like a memory half-faded by old fatigue, brought back by recent anger.

  Chief’s radio lies on the floor mat. Edu leans over, picking up the clunky walkie-talkie and examining it. It’s filthy, caked in all manner of things that come out of bodies. He turns a dial, and the chunk of plastic crackles to life, a pale green light turning on on its side. Edu cranks the dial back and the crackling fades. As Gerardo moves toward the driver’s seat, Edu pockets it.

  ◆◆◆

  Gloria growls down a road paved with garbage and blocked by overturned cars and rubble. Gloria’s front grill scrapes against one of the upside-down cars, pushing it until it hits another car a couple of feet behind it, stuck. The massive semi is unable to move forward.

  Gerardo swivels the steering wheel. He scans the wreckage on the road. Edu peeks out of his window. “The one on the right’s blocked too,” he says.

  “Figures,” Gerardo says.

  “Wanna go around?” Edu asks.

  “No, if we go back the only other road is through one of the hospital slums, and I’m not doing that.”

  “Clean up crew, then?” Gerardo nods. Edu slaps the roof, signaling to the others inside the trailer.

  ◆◆◆

  Gerardo holds a shovel. Edu swings a sledgehammer and a rifle over each of his shoulders. They walk up to one of the overturned cars and ram their tools under its crushed bumper. They grunt with the effort, sweat dripping from their foreheads, stinging t
heir already strained eyes.

  This is the kind of work they’re built for, mindless toiling under the hot sun, problem-solving where there is only one right answer and the wrong ones don’t get you killed. It reminds Gerardo why he started working construction in the first place. But now, even something as simple as this is complicated by the Insomnia. Under it, everything becomes a transaction, a gamble between saving your energy for later or using it now and getting out of something that might get you killed. It’s all calculations and doomed projections. How many hours since you last slept? How many hours until you won’t be able to walk anymore?

  They manage to lift the wreck’s front bumper, raising spikes of crushed metal off the shredded asphalt beneath it. It’s still an unwieldy chunk of metal, but one that Gloria will be able to move more easily. Gerardo turns around. Behind him, Gabo sits in Gloria’s driver’s seat. He looks uncomfortable in the massive cabin.

  “Alright,” Gerardo says, “move up, nice and easy.”

  Gabo revs Gloria a little too hard, she growls unevenly as his foot dips too hard and for too long. But he gets her under control before long. Her grill bashes the wreckage, metal scraping the asphalt like a thousand nails on mile-long cardboard. Gloria pushes the overturned car onto the sidewalk, like a toy truck moving a Hot Wheels car.

  Gerardo and Edu stand aside, knocking random pieces of rubble off the road. “Should be enough to get through now, ” Gerardo says, “I think you’re good, Gabo!”

  Gabo nods. He grips the steering wheel like it’s a living thing you have to tame. Gloria veers around the wreckage, moving past it and further down the street.

  “Alright!” Gerardo shouts, “we’re good the rest of the way, now let’s get—”

  Bang! A bullet dings off Gloria’s roof. Gerardo and Edu drop into a crouch and duck behind an overturned car. The windows they’re leaning on are splattered from the inside with a brown mess that Gerardo knows was once red. “Goddamnit!” he whispers.

  Edu drops the sledgehammer and swings the rifle off his shoulder, trading one tool for another. “There! Yellow building, third window up,” he whispers.

  Gerardo peeks over the car. In a dark, open window, a rifle scope glints.

  Bang!

  Gerardo ducks again, but they weren’t aiming at him. He shoots a peek at Gloria. There’s another bullet-hole in her side. Behind the wheel, Gabo tries to take cover and drive at the same time. “Gerry, help!” he shouts.

  “Keep going! We’ll run up to you!” Gerardo shouts back.

  “We’ve got these fucks,” Edu mutters confidently.

  Gerardo pulls the handgun out of his belt. “Okay. I give suppressing fire. You wait for an opening,” he says.

  “Uh-huh,” Edu says as if this conversation is an unnecessary, but welcome, ritual.

  Gerardo angles the gun over the wreck. He shoots a random window. Next to him, Edu rests his rifle on an overturned car. He presses his eye into the scope and holds his breath. The glint reappears.

  Bang! But Edu misses, hitting the frame below the open window. A sniper bullet whizzes above him in response. This is a fatal dialogue, one where timing is everything. Speaking too late or too early will mean a bullet in the head.

  “Fuck. Fuck!” Edu shouts. He raises his rifle again. It shakes in his weak hands. He holds his breath. Bang. Edu lowers his rifle. From inside the window, a pained shriek echoes.

  “Nice shot!” Gerardo says.

  “Let’s move,” Edu responds.

  Gerardo and Edu run around the street corner. Their eyes sweep over every window around them. A couple of feet away from them, in the middle of the road, Gloria slows to a halt. Gabo peeks his head out of the driver’s side.

  Gerardo grabs the empty frame that once held the driver’s door, hopping onto the semi’s side skirt. Edu hops on the one on the passenger’s side. Gabo nods and smiles, as if a warm blanket’s just been draped over him.

  “Alright, don’t slow down too long, let’s go,” Gerardo says.

  TWELVE

  Gloria darts down a winding street. It’s all clear. There’s nothing on either side but abandoned buildings touched by hundreds of invisible, frantic, dying hands. Most of the windows are shattered, several of the walls are blackened by fire, others are scrawled with graffiti shouting obscenities and pleading for more rations. Street corners are dotted with piles of trash like cairns. Lazies lie on the road, bloated, split open from their own internal gases or under car tires.

  Gerardo and Edu sit in the cabin. Gerardo’s eyes are half closed. Even beneath his sunglasses, the sunlight is offensive. Not just too bright, but too sharp, cutting into his vision and forcing him to blink to get the multicolored after-images out of his world.

  He’s never been this focused on his eyes. Before the Insomnia, he’d only think about them when he was working construction, where clouds of brick dust or particles of cement might get picked up by the wind and get shot into them. But, even then, he’d just put on a pair of shades and that solved the problem. Now he was aware of them in every waking moment. Blinking was no longer automatic. It was like dipping your feet into a cool pool in the middle of a desert. It felt nice, sure, but you felt a primitive urge to dive in and never resurface.

  Diana’s head peeks out from the hatch to the trailer. “You guys have to see this,” she says. Edu and Gerardo share a confused look. Diana never looks into the cabin. It’s part of the reason why Edu despises her Faithful shit. She’s a hypocrite. Sometimes, Gerardo will run over something and Diana never even asks what it was. Like she knows. Like she wants to keep herself untainted. ‘Well, too fucking bad, sister,’ Edu thinks, ‘you threw your lot in with us, knowing exactly what we’d do to survive.’ But whatever, Edu doesn’t really give a shit. If it makes her feel any better, Diana can stay in the darkness of the trailer, seeing the world through rifle slits, while Gerardo and Edu have front row seats to the freak show just beyond the windshield.

  Gerardo steps on the brakes.

  ◆◆◆

  Gerardo and Edu walk around the parked semi and approach the trailer. Diana opens the door as quietly as she can. Edu holds his shotgun uneasily, as if Diana’s leading them toward an ambush. It’s stupid, but the thought’s there anyway. Edu doesn’t think much about it, doesn’t analyze why he feels that way, he just holds his shotgun at the ready and narrows his eyes at Diana.

  “What—” Gerardo begins, but Diana shushes him. She moves out of the doorway. Anita lies on the floor of the trailer. Gabo’s staring at her incredulously. Gerardo and Edu lean in for a better look. Anita’s eyes are closed. She’s using a backpack as a pillow. She’s breathing slowly. Her body’s completely relaxed.

  “Jesus. What did you give her?” Gerardo asks, whispering.

  “Nothing! She just laid down and...went to sleep,” Diana says, almost to herself.

  Gerardo leans over Anita. Her face is a mask of peaceful slumber, her breathing’s slow and rhythmic. She’s even snoring a little, making a little phlegmy rattle as she breathes in… she’s asleep.

  Gerardo backs away. His eyes are wide, his mouth agape. He looks like a man who’s just seen the Holy Grail. Or rather, someone else in possession of it. He’s a man lost in the desert watching someone else drain a canteen. His eyes narrow. The mask of comfortable disbelief slips back in place. “Let’s just get her to the Faithful," he says.

  “Do you believe her now?” Diana asks, chasing him, not letting him get away from the truth in front of both of them.

  “I don’t know,” Gerardo says.

  “Have you seen us at night?” Diana asks.

  Gerardo stops walking. “What’s your point?”

  “We squirm, shift around. We take uneasy breaths. We’re lying down, but we’re awake. Fully awake.”

  “Cut to the chase, Diana, you’re giving me a fucking headache.”

  “Look at her. She’s asleep! She’s fucking snoring. When was the last time you heard someone snore? This is real, can’t you see that?�
��

  “I see that if we don’t move now, we’ll be dead! Close that door, before someone sees her!”

  Diana hops in and grabs the door. She takes one last look at Anita, who mumbles uneasily in her sleep. Diana closes the door gently and leans over Anita. She grabs an old shirt in the corner and drapes it over her carefully. It’s the world’s worst blanket, but it’ll do. “You were telling the truth…" she whispers, “you’re a miracle.”

  ◆◆◆

  Gerardo stares at the morphine box on the dashboard. It’s an escape, an open door just out of reach. He yawns. It spreads like a tropical virus: Edu yawns, then Gabo, then Diana. He shuts his eyes for a second as he massages them, trying not to think about Anita sleeping in the back of the truck. There’s a weight on Gerardo, on everyone inside the semi except Anita. If only he could lift it, just for a little while. If only he could feel how he felt before it was put on him…but he can’t. None of them can. Except her. He starts the truck.

  Gloria drives down a street, swerving out of the way of car wrecks and an overturned ambulance.

  At the start, you could still count on emergency services. They were the unspoken, invisible, expected blanket around a world shivering and trying to pull itself apart.

  During that First Sleepless Night, thousands of people called ambulances. They were parents of newborn babies, spouses or relatives of the elderly, all with the same urgent message: my baby won’t sleep, my elderly mother can’t sleep, I can’t sleep. And the ambulances showed up. Many of the EMTs inside already had a sleepless night on their shoulders and hadn’t yet realized that, once their shift was over, they’d be unable to fall asleep either.