What Once We Feared

by Carrie Ryan

  When the elevator doors whisked open, I wasn’t looking. I was racing toward the row of pool cues hanging on the wall.

  It was the first time I’d heard the moaning close up and personal. Not filtered through the TV as background noise in a newscast or as part of the panicked stampede out of Uptown earlier.

  This was the sound of something that used to be human and was no more. It was the kind of thing that could make your heart stop, your lungs constrict, your nerves shrivel.

  Later the sound would become the backdrop to everyday life, the way the hiss of electronics and the buzz of traffic used to be. But not in that moment. Right then, I realized that death had a sound and it was coming for us.

  “No, no no no nonononono,” I kept muttering under my breath. I’d had the winning hand here—I’d known how to keep us safe, and this wasn’t part of it.

  I swept the pool cues into my arms, hating how flimsy they felt. How in the world could these protect us? Protect me? They’d snap instantaneously. No way could they inflict the damage necessary.

  When I got back to the door I saw Gregor in the hallway, holding the chair up like a lion tamer, trying to push back a tall woman in a business suit. One of her sleeves was ripped off and her skirt was twisted. A gash ran the length of her face, flapping open to show her teeth and the bones around her eye. Her hair was drenched with blood. It was still wet, hanging in ropes that splashed against her neck and sent droplets flinging onto the walls and the front of Gregor’s shirt.

  I could just close the door, I thought. My hand curled around the knob. Nicky and I would be safe locked in here. We could survive.

  Behind me, Nicky gurgled in panic, and Gregor must have heard, because he glanced up at me. With that one look he knew. I could see it register in his eyes. I was going to abandon him.

  Every man for himself, he was thinking, remembering the way I’d said it earlier.

  The thing about decisions is that sometimes you don’t make them for the right reasons. Sometimes you have an idea of yourself that isn’t real. It’s an aspiration; it’s the picture you hold in your mind so that you don’t weep at all of your failings.

  In my head, I was the savior. I was the strong one, the guy in charge who could keep us safe. But I knew standing there that that would never be me. Never could be me.

  In reality, I was the coward. The one so terrified of dying I’d sacrifice anyone and everyone for the chance to keep my own heart beating for just another second.

  With that single glance, Gregor knew this truth about me. It was written in the disappointment that shuddered his breathing with the terror-laced understanding that suddenly, he was alone in his fight.

  What’s funny is that if I’d just let him die, he’d have taken that knowledge with him. I’d have been safe from his censure. I could have repositioned the mask of competence over my face and stared down the next challenge, hoping not to waver and fall again.

  The thing is—I didn’t decide to save Gregor because that’s the kind of guy I am. I tried to save him because I couldn’t stand him knowing the worst of me.

  The chair Gregor used as a weapon was heavy and unwieldy. His arms were tiring and his reactions slowing. I leapt into the fight with a pool cue in each hand. My first swipe went wild, snapping against the woman’s shoulder and doing nothing.

  “That won’t work!” Gregor screamed.

  “I know!” I shouted back.

  Images from old kung fu movies flashed in my head, but none of them were long or bright enough for me to capture them and figure out what to do. Behind us, Nicky screamed, “Kill it!” as though somehow that would be helpful.

  The woman lurched, her teeth snapping at Gregor’s fingers. He yanked his hand out of reach, dropping one side of the chair in the process. In that second he was unprotected, and the creature lunged.

  I tried to use the cue to push her back, but the angles were off. I was only successful at tilting her off balance, and I quickly shoved the other cue between her legs, tripping her.

  She fell to the floor with a thump, something somewhere inside her snapping. Already she was pushing herself to her knees. I didn’t know what to do to stop her, so I kicked her in the abdomen, sending her tumbling to the side. Gregor toppled the chair over her, trying to position it so that the crossbars on the legs would pin her down. But it wasn’t working.

  She grabbed Gregor’s pants, yanking hard. He lost his footing and fell, his head smashing the wall as his body went limp. The woman flailed, teeth going straight for Gregor’s ankle. Nicky screamed.

  If I’d had time maybe I’d have thought to wedge the pool cue in her mouth so she couldn’t bite him. I could have rolled the woman onto her stomach and pinned her arms back while the others figured out a way to tie her up.

  But I knew nothing except panic; I tasted its bitterness at the back of my throat, the heat of it searing my neurons so that I couldn’t think. Instead, I just acted out of pure, blind instinct and kicked the woman, hard, in the face.

  The year before I’d been the place kicker on the football team. I knew how to kick a ball, how to gather the power in your legs and transfer it out through the top of your foot.

  As I felt her teeth rip free and heard her jaw popping, I thought, This is a woman’s face you’re destroying. A human being you’re attacking.

  Her head snapped back, her moans choked on shards of teeth now lodged in her throat. But that didn’t stop her reaching for Gregor again.

  It was like this would never end.

  That’s the truth I grasped in that moment and never lost again: this was the beginning. I could kill this woman and there would be another behind her. And another behind that. They would come and come and come and eventually I’d have nothing left in me to fight.

  It would never be a question of how long they could last; it was all about how long I could. And I knew, right then, that I would give up. Not now and perhaps not soon, but at some point I would have fight left in me, and I would let it go.

  Because I wasn’t strong enough for this new world.

  In the end, I’m not a survivor.

  There was something about embracing my inevitable death, knowing that it would come and it would be my choice, that made it easier to flip the chair over and press the top rail of it against the woman’s throat. She was pinned on her back, facing me, her jaw crooked, her mouth a gaping mess.

  Her mascara was smeared, dried grayish tears streaking her cheeks. I assumed she’d died in the elevator, alone. Just trying to go home. Later, when we started breaking into apartments looking for supplies, I’d find hers—a tidy corner unit with views of the mountains. Her furniture was modern, her bathroom a mess, and her kitchen had been that of a woman who loved to cook. Cupboards stuffed full, a refrigerator with the first fresh vegetables we’d had in days. She had only one picture frame on her dresser, and in it was a photo of her and another girl who looked just like her. Probably her sister.

  Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to find that sister. To have to confess that that woman was the first human being I’d ever purposefully hurt. She was the first I killed.

  And it was terrible and impossible.

  As I pressed the rail of the chair against her throat I realized that choking her was useless. Decapitation or destruction of the brain—that’s what we’d been told on the news were the only defenses. And yet, no matter how much weight I put behind it, even when I jumped, trying to add pressure, I couldn’t sever her neck. I couldn’t even crush her spinal cord.

  Nicky had pulled a groggy Gregor out of the way, and she cradled his head in her lap as she watched me try to kill this woman. “Oh God,” she moaned over and over again. Felipe had come back, and he pulled another chair from the billiard room to finally block off the second elevator. This time, Nicky didn’t protest or mention her dad.

  Beatrice stood down the hallway, already a dim ghost. I should have realized then that she’d jump, eventually. The first of us to give up.

&
nbsp; But not the last.

  I’d grown up with the assumption that the human body is fragile. It isn’t. “Give me a pool cue,” I said, holding out my hand. Nicky traded glances with Felipe, and I could tell she was about to ask why when he shook his head slightly, stopping her.

  He picked it up, held it out to me. It wasn’t easy to line up the tip of it against the woman’s eye. Her lids were open, the irises visible, and I didn’t want to see, but I had to.

  It took more force than I thought it would, and all the while the woman struggled, snapping her teeth at me. Terror clogged my throat, infiltrated my lungs like smoke. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t force my muscles to move the way they needed to.

  Her eyeball compressed but held firm. I tried using momentum but I was shaking too hard, and each time I tried to bring the tip of the pool cue down I missed the socket. Nicky was fully sobbing at this point and the elevator doors were still trying to close; their alarms screamed.

  “Just do it!” Nicky screeched.

  And I did. Letting go of the chair, I wrapped both hands around the pool cue and I jammed it into the dead woman’s eye with all the force of my body weight and then some. There was a sickening pop that I felt more than heard as the tip of the cue jerked down, sinking through the bone of her orbital socket and then her brain.

  The woman choked out one last moan as I twisted the cue, moving it back and forth like it was a shovel loosening dirt.

  I know there was still sound, but in my head there was silence. A soft, stuffy kind like you see on TV when a character’s hearing goes out after an explosion. Everyone else sat stunned, staring at me.

  Maybe I expected to see some sort of admiration. A moment of unity that we’re all in this together—that it wasn’t me alone who’d killed this woman, but me acting on behalf of a team.

  Except that wasn’t what I found. I knew they were grateful. I knew they understood that I’d saved their lives. But that couldn’t keep the horror from their eyes. The disgust.

  Later they’d rally around me and Felipe would start joking about it. And once, when we pried open the door to the neighbor’s wine closet, he and Gregor would act it all out again and we’d laugh (Beatrice would already be gone by then).

  But in that moment there was just a sound-softened silence. All of them staring at me like I was the monster.

  “Help me get him up,” Nicky finally murmured to Felipe, and together they helped Gregor to his feet. A thin trickle of blood smeared the back of his neck, and it took him a minute to become steady.

  We left the woman in the little vestibule by the elevators for the time being. It felt strange to abandon her there like that. She looked so exposed—no longer a monster but the victim of some cruel and sadistic murder. Before catching up with the others, I flipped the chair over in an attempt to cover her ravaged face.

  Nicky’s father’s place was at the far end of the building, one of a pair of apartments that jutted toward Uptown like a finger pointing at the city. The door opened onto a long rectangular room with the kitchen first, the dining room in the middle, and an awkwardly shaped living room at the other end.

  Hardwood gleamed along the floor, the far wall nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows bordering a pair of sliding doors that opened onto a wide balcony. Beyond was a spectacular view of Uptown, the afternoon sun glaring off a sea of office buildings.

  A set of double doors off the living room led to the master suite: a massive space with a king-sized bed and full sitting area flanking another wall of windows, a huge walk-in closet, and a marble bathroom that boasted both a Jacuzzi and walk-in shower. Next to the kitchen was a hallway that led to another full bathroom, a bedroom (Nicky’s room, I guessed, though it was about as personalized as a hotel), and an office.

  Outside was chaos, but inside a sort of odd calm settled around us. The dissipation of adrenaline left us drained and worn. Something inside Nicky must have clicked into “hostess” mode—maybe it made her feel normal to offer us something to drink and eat. As if this were any ordinary day and we were just hanging out after school.

  We tried calling home using both our cell phones and the land line, but the system must have been overloaded, because we could never get through (only Gregor would get the chance to speak to his parents again, and he refused to tell us anything about the conversation. He just hung up the phone and stepped out onto the balcony, where he screamed and screamed and screamed).

  Beyond that, no one really had much to say. We barely made eye contact as we shuffled through the unfamiliar rooms. Suddenly, we became oddly polite, apologizing in soft voices if we had to maneuver around one another to get to the bathroom or ask for a towel.

  As the day wore on, we each retreated to separate areas, as though marking out territory. Gregor lay on the master bed with an ice pack on his head, while Beatrice drifted into the guest room, closing the door behind her. All of us could hear her sobbing, but none of us knew what to say.

  Ultimately, Felipe ended up in the office, which looked more like central command than anything else. One wall held four televisions, and he tuned them all to different channels. The computer had three screens, and he quickly filled them with an array of news blogs, obsessively refreshing and following links for more information.

  Nicky staked her claim on the balcony outside, tucking herself into an Adirondack chair with a quilt wrapped around her shoulders and her back to the windows. I had no idea how she was doing: if she was awake or asleep, crying or praying.

  I couldn’t settle anywhere. I tried sitting on the couch, but my mind roared with action plans. So much needed to be done, and every time I thought of something new I added it to my mental list, which was shaped like a pinwheel and kept spinning and spinning and spinning.

  There were so many variables, so many calculations to make, that all of it felt like quicksand. We needed to gather food, but how urgent that was depended on how long the electricity lasted and how quickly the food in the fridges spoiled. Nicky had mentioned that some of the building’s power came from solar panels mounted on the roof, but who knew how much that would help?

  We needed to figure out what to do about the guy down the hall. He was clearly infected, but how long would it be until he turned? How long did we have to figure out how to kill him and build up the nerve to follow through with it?

  My mind flicked through possibilities like a deck of cards: we could us a knife, a hammer, a baseball bat. We could search the other apartments for a gun. But how would we get access to the other places? The doors were reinforced with steel. (In the end we cut through the walls, tunneling from room to room. It turned out that the couple down the hall had a loaded revolver in their bedside table, but by the time we found it, it was too late—Gregor and I had already taken care of the infected guy with a carving knife and a nine iron.)

  I needed to find bike chains to double-lock the gates on the stairs, I needed to find buckets and bowls to fill with water, I needed to find a way to paint “5/Alive” on a sheet and hang it out the window, as the news instructed. I needed to figure out if there were pets in the other apartments and what to do with them.

  My mind wheeled down all the various paths our lives were about to take, parsing the possibilities, finding the holes and stuffing them with solutions that were the wrong shape and size no matter how tantalizingly right they appeared. There were so many “if … then” possibilities that any attempt to figure out the future fractured under the weight of uncertainty.

  And when dawn finally broke, I knew I’d followed the thread of every eventuality and they all led to the same knotted end.

  Stepping out onto the balcony was like stepping into another world. This side of the building jutted out from a sloping bank, so the drop to the ground was much farther than I’d expected. At the bottom of the hill sat a concrete barrier topped by a fence that bordered the southern stretch of the interstate loop around Uptown.

  Car alarms blared, horns blasted, people screame
d. The air smelled of blood and ash, pain and despair. Down the road flames blazed and smoke billowed from a twisted pile of metal that used to be an eighteen-wheeler and who knows how many cars. A few industrious souls tried to thread their way through on foot, bikes, or motorcycles.

  But the fences along the interstate were like the walls of the shore, keeping the tide of living dead from escaping. From my vantage point so many stories up, it was easy to recognize that those people trapped on the road had little chance of surviving. But they didn’t know that yet. They couldn’t see what I did: the churning storm of dead less than a mile away.

  I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted a warning. Nicky stirred behind me: “I tried already—it won’t work. Even if they hear you, they won’t listen.” Her voice was listless, scratchy.

  It crawled under my skin. Because I knew she was right and that she wasn’t just talking about the poor souls on the road below. She was talking about all of us. We were fooling ourselves into thinking that by continuing the struggle we could somehow survive. That that was all it took, the act of struggle somehow a guarantee of success.

  But that didn’t mean we didn’t have our own storm of dead to face down the road. Just because we were safer didn’t mean we were safe.

  The thing was, Nicky had suddenly stopped playing by the rules, and that made me angry. The rule was that she pretended we could be okay. That was her role in all of this: hopeful survivor.

  “What, so you’re just gonna give up?” I failed to keep from sneering, and so I kept my back to her, my hands clenched around the wide railing along the balcony. She didn’t answer, which made it worse.

  I needed a fight. Because of the itch I could never scratch, the need to do in a world where doing had become impossible. The rest of them found ways to contend with this new reality (well, until Beatrice jumped and the fall didn’t kill her—that was the beginning of the end for Felipe).