SEE! THE WORLD’S ONLY LIVING ANGEL! The sign hung on a sagging
banner above a cage with cheaply gilded bars and imitation pearls.
Inside, heaps of white wool fleece covered the floor and made lofty
piles in the corners in front of a backdrop painted with a serene blue
sky and an artfully placed white dove.
Portia Gyony sat bored most days in a smothering gown of heavy antique
satin. She pretended that her hair was not, in fact, the shimmering
silver-white of freshly fallen snow under a full moon, nor her eyes as
gold as gypsy bangles. She kept her wings pressed tightly to her back so
they looked as much like paste and swan feathers as possible and no one
could see that they shone like a star’s halo. She imagined herself to
be a well-conceived hoax and did not have to feign apathy as she slumped
in the corner of her cell, looking at no one.
Her captors on the airship had been coarse, but kind. They kept their
distance, one venturing near only to bring her a grimy scrap of paper
bearing a long line of dots and dashes. Code under code, it was a note
from the Primacy: Stay quiet, stay put. We know where you are and we will come fetch you.
When the men from the circus came, she went, hoping they would deliver
her to her people, but instead they brought her to a shabby little beach
town. Tourists flocked to Capitola-by-the-Sea to pay a penny to see her
and two bits to take a zeppelin tour of the strange opal tower that had
appeared on the coast.
It had been weeks since she had escaped that very tower. Nigel Aldias,
her adversary since childhood, held court there now. Portia could hear
him when she dozed, his whispered seductions to any spirit he could
find. And they came. Spectral streams lit the sky like ribbons of
twinkling light, all ever moving toward the tower. Portia watched and
waited. She dared not act until she was given orders. She could not
imagine that it would take the Primacy long at all, but the days
stretched on into weeks.
They came in waves: the gawkers, the men with starry eyes and marriage
proposals, and always the wan and shadow-eyed mothers clutching their
sick children to their depleted breasts. Portia was no healer, and she
had nothing but a few murmured words of solace and a blessing of
strength upon the little ones. They understood, those who existed on the
knife’s edge between life and death. But the mothers skulked away,
betrayed. Portia’s heart broke for them, but there was nothing she could
do. Soon enough, the mothers stopped coming, only to be replaced by
more would-be suitors as her fame spread.
The Primacy never arrived. No word followed the first clipped message
weeks before. The Primacy consisted of a small handful of Nephilim of
the Regalii lineage. Portia had never met a member of the Primacy, nor
even a Regalii. She did not trust them, but not because they had clout
and status and did not like to get their hands dirty. She did not trust
them because she did not know who they were, or even where they
were, and that bothered her. Especially now, while she sweltered in a
heavy gown in a cage in a town that felt a hundred miles from home.
Waiting, as she had been asked, obediently.
It galled her.
Yet she stayed quiet, and stayed put. Her training ran deep. And she hated it.
“Portia, lass.”
She jolted out of a drowsing half-dream, shaking the languor from her
limbs as they tingled from Imogen’s imaginary touch. The man leaning
against the bars of her cage pushed his grey top hat back from his face.
“Captain,” she whispered, disbelieving. “Oh, please let this be real.”
He smiled, and the curling ends of his waxed moustache rose. “I’m here,
dear girl. I am really here. But I can’t tarry. Here.” He slid an
envelope into the cell.
Portia crawled toward it and slipped it into her bulky sleeve. She
looked up at Captain Cadmus Gyony, her commander and mentor, and tears
rose in her eyes. She stretched her fingers through the bars and gripped
his hand.
“It is good to see you hale and whole, although not exactly as I remember you.”
Portia could not meet his gaze. “What is to become of me, Captain? Haven’t they decided to come for me?”
“I can’t say, really. There aren’t many details there.” He nodded at
her sleeve. “But I know the Primacy is indeed sending someone here. And
soon. They are interested in this matter. Quite interested.”
She nodded. “Tell me, then, before you go….” She could barely bring
herself to speak the words, but she could not bear another night of
empty dreams that promised so much yet confirmed nothing. “Imogen?”
Cadmus chuckled and glanced back over his shoulder. “Anna,” he barked.
“Come on over here and see this! It’s the damndest thing, I’m telling
you!”
Lady Anna Gyony, tall and regal in her blue walking dress, stepped from
the shadows at the far side of the great tent that still smelled
suspiciously of elephant.
“What have we here?” She smiled, lighting up her bright blue eyes. “A lonely angel?”
Anna’s companion stepped into the lamplight and Portia gasped.
“This is no place for such a creature.” Imogen Gyony stood before the gaudy cage as real as anything.
Cadmus and Anna stepped behind her and opened up a large folding map, arguing over the most direct route to their lodgings.
“Imogen!” Portia reached her arms through the narrow gaps between the
bars and gathered Imogen into them, pressing her close, with the cheap
gold paint flaking off between them.
“Oh, Portia, love. Thank heavens you’re safe. I didn’t know what to do
when I woke without you. No one knew what had become of you.” She pulled
a handkerchief from the sleeve of her pretty green dress and wiped her
eyes. They looked strange in the low light, as if they did not quite
match one another.
“You disappeared. Just vanished right in front of me, and I thought for certain you were lost!” Portia fought back tears.
Between the gilded iron bars, they found just enough space to reach one
another’s lips. Portia breathed the scent of Imogen’s soft skin --
vanilla, strawberries, and gentle spices.
“I love you,” Portia gasped into her lover’s mouth. “I could just close
my eyes right now and die happy knowing you are safe and alive, oh God,
you’re alive!”
“Thanks to you,” Imogen murmured. “You came into the very pit of hell to find me.”
“And I’d do it again.”
“I know.”
Portia traced the curves of Imogen's face and tugged on the bright red
curls of her hair. “I have missed you, the real you. The touch and taste
and smell of you.”
Imogen caught her fingers and kissed them, cradling them against her
cheek. “Me, too. It was so difficult to see your body, but never really
touch it.” She snaked her slender wrist through the bars and ran a
fingertip down Portia’s throat.
Portia caught her breath and shuddered. She gazed into Imogen’s eyes
and her mouth fell open. A blush crept up from Imogen’s high lace collar
and she turned away.
“Look at me,” Portia urged. “I want to see.”
Slowly, Imogen turned her face back toward the cage and opened her
eyes. They surprised Portia, at once both all too familiar and yet
strange. Green, yes -- Imogen’s dark, olivine green eyes -- but with an
inner layer of amber that circled her pupils. It was as if Portia’s and
Imogen’s eyes had been merged into one, which, in essence, they had.
Gently, Portia stroked her fingertips across Imogen’s eyelids, just as
she had in the antechamber of the tower when she had given Imogen her
own eyes that she might see after hers had been stolen.
Tears trickled down Imogen’s cheeks. “See? You are always with me. I
can never look at myself, or look at anything, really, without knowing
what you gave to me.”
“I don’t know what to say, except that they look beautiful in your face.”
“They were both shadow-dark when I first awoke. But like a newborn
babe’s might, they soon settled into this.” She shrugged. “I cannot
honestly complain. But you… gold? Portia, I don’t know what’s going to become of you.”
Portia blinked, trying to feel the difference between the eyes through
which she now saw and the ones she'd always had. They did not feel any
different, and she had not gotten a good look at them herself. But she
had seen the reaction to them. Fear, awe, curiosity, lust. As golden as
wolf’s eyes, she would never be able to hide her nature from anyone who
looked into them.
“I’ll live. I’ve no other choice, do I?” Portia smiled, a little
lopsided. “It’ll be all right, you’ll see, my love. Besides, I’ve lived
with silver hair for so long, golden eyes shouldn’t be so much more
difficult.”
Cadmus cleared his throat and yawned in a loud, grandiose manner. Portia could hear voices outside, coming nearer.
Imogen’s face fell. “I must go. But I’ll be back, Portia, I promise!”
She slipped her long fingers into the neck of her gown and pulled up a
tarnished silver heart-shaped padlock charm with a keyhole cut through
its center. She pressed it to her chest lovingly. “Did yours…?”
Smiling, Portia rolled back the gold embroidered cuff of her other
sleeve. A tea-brown ribbon wrapped several times around her wrist, and
from it dangled an equally tarnished little silver key. “Of course.”
They spent their last moments in a lingering goodbye kiss until Anna stepped between them.
“I’m so sorry, Portia, but we must.”
“I understand.”
The three of them meandered out of the large, striped tent and into the
fading sunshine. Portia wanted to wave and call out to them, but
instead, she settled back into her corner and, when she felt certain
they were long gone, took the letter out of her sleeve. The short
missive told her nothing that Cadmus had not. The Primacy knew where she
was. They knew what had happened to her, or at least pretended that
they did. They advised her once again to stay quiet and stay put. They
would send further instructions.
“Poxy bastards.” She folded the note back into the envelope and rose on
her tiptoes until she could just reach the corner of it into the
nearest lantern. The expensive paper smoked a long while before it
caught fire. Portia held it until it burned down to her fingertips. It
did not so much as singe them.
“Parlor tricks?”
Portia jumped. She had not heard the man enter. He came in on silent
feet, pausing to tie down the flap behind him. She tensed, drawing her
legs beneath her and pressing her wings close to her back, ready to
strike.
The man turned, sweeping his cloak back from his arms, and touched the
brim of his hat to her. His eyes were hidden behind peculiar blue-tinted
glasses fitted with several magnifying lenses that could be dropped
down in any number and combination from the brass frames. He fiddled
with them, raising and lowering several of them in succession as he
looked her over. He nodded and murmured to himself, then shook his head
as if disagreeing with his own thoughts.
His drawn face was pale in the dimness, and his lean body was all but
lost in the folds of his rich wool suit. But in Portia’s vision, she
could tell that he was no ordinary man. And no ordinary Nephilim,
either.
“Do you know who I am, girl?” he whispered with only a minute movement of his thin lips.
“What does the Primacy wish of me?”
“Astute.” The magnifying lenses clicked into place and up again.
Finally satisfied with what he saw, the man pushed the glasses down his
nose and gazed at her with unblinking green-grey eyes flecked with gold.
“The reports do you no justice, Mistress Gyony.”
Portia shrugged. “The reports do not concern me. How long do I have to stay here? It’s humiliating and I am damn tired of it.”
“That is not for you to decide, I’m afraid. You are far too valuable to risk, and here, you are safe.”
“Safe? Here? Safer here than in my own home?” She felt each feather of
her wings start to stand on end as irritation coursed through her body.
“What about the information I have? Surely that means something to you!”
“We have enough information.”
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Names have power, Portia Gyony.”
“I know. That’s why I want yours.”
He paused, tilting his head to regard her. “Lord Alaric Regalii,” he answered, finally. “Does that please you?”
“Enough. Now tell me when you’ll get me out of this place.”
“Soon.” He glanced around, nose wrinkling as if finally noticing the
interior of the tent for the first time. “You won’t think it soon
enough, I’m sure, but I’d like you keep you somewhere safe where we can
keep an eye on you. That gives us a bit more time to investigate the
tower before anyone goes and causes a ruckus.”
“I fear that Nigel may have begun again -- ”
“Nigel? That grasping Aldias brat?” Lord Alaric scoffed. “Even if it
was he that Imogen claimed you fought, and yes, we have debriefed her on
this matter -- you did get a chance to visit with her just now, I
trust?” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, there is no way he can recover
the mass and matter to threaten us again. So put those fears to rest, my
dear girl, and try to make the best of things here.”
“Do not underestimate him.”
“I promise not to,” he told her, placating.
“It would be to your peril,” she warned once more.
“We have our best investigating the matter of this tower. We will send
for you, Mistress Gyony.” He slid the glasses back in place and shrugged
the cloak closed over his body. He untied the tent flap’s lacings and
stepped through, pausing to bow his head toward her gilded cage. “Your
duty to the Grigori will be noted.”
Portia gave him a curt nod in reply. “Good. I’ll be wanting a parade.”
Author Bio:
Sara M. Harvey made her fiction debut in 2006 with the romantic urban fantasy A Year and a Day.
Sara’s love of steampunk pushed her towards writing within that genre
with her first two novella releases from Apex Publishing: The Convent of the Pure and The Labyrinth of the Dead.
Both can be described as paranormal Victorian Age romances with lesbian
protagonists set in a steampunk environment. Harvey’s showcase of her
unique style of genre-crossing work has been described by Jacqueline
Carey as ‘a compelling blend of the numinous and the creepy’.
Originally published in DARK FAITH (Apex Publications) 2011 Nebula Award Nominee--Short Story
Poets
and sages like to say that there is clarity in certain death. That a
calm resignation settles over the nearly deceased, and they embrace the
inevitability of the end of life with dignity and grace.
But there
was no clarity for her, no calmness, no life flashing before her eyes
in a montage of joys and regrets. There was just pure animal terror,
screams torn from her throat as she plummeted toward the ground in the
longest ten seconds of her life.
And then there was an explosion of pain.
She
remembered flailing at the air, as if she could somehow sink her nails
into it and cling there until help arrived. She remembered the crash and
pop of the people who were landing mere seconds before her. She
remembered a fleeting moment of shame when her dress blew up over her
head, exposing her underwear to the crowds gathered below. She
remembered the burst of shit and piss as she crashed through the awning
just a split second before she hit—
The only people who find
clarity in certain death are those who somehow cheat it, those who can
reflect back upon the experience and use it to goad them into living a
better life.
For the ghosts, there is only terror.
After her
first fall, she stood by the roadkill smear that was her body, not
recognizing what she was seeing at first, until two more bodies rained
down from above, splattering on pavement with a crash of glass and a
sickening splat.
Then she knew.
Then the North Tower collapsed.
All
around her, people screamed and ran while she stood helplessly by the
wreckage of her body. Debris flew through her, burying her corpse,
leaving the ghost of her untouched.
And then she fell again.
If
anything, it was worse than the first time. Now, it was an echo of a
fall, a non-existent body falling from a non-existent building, with all
the terror of the original fall—the same flailing, the same flash of
embarrassment, the same piss—
The same body-shattering moment of pain at the end.
Days
passed, the dust cleared, the debris and bodies were carried away, but
still she fell, over and over, sinking through the sky for the same
interminably long ten seconds, the pain of impact fresh and raw each and
every time.
Between falls, she wondered if she were in hell. She
wondered what terrible thing she’d done in life to merit this kind of
eternal punishment. But she couldn’t remember.
She couldn’t remember anything.
No,
that wasn’t strictly true. In the chest-heaving intervals between
falls, she could remember, if she tried, the blistering heat and choking
smoke. She remembered mobbing a broken window with a half-dozen other
people, gulping in precious lungfuls of clean air. She remembered a
floor too hot to stand on, the eerie creak of metal. She remembered a
man and a woman dropping past her window, hand in hand. She remembered
looking over her shoulder at the impenetrable wall of smoke. She
remembered a scream stuck in her throat, a heart that felt like it would
burst through her chest, a desperate wish to breathe just once more
before she died.
She remembered a split-second decision, legs suddenly unfrozen, propelling her out into the blue September sky.
But before that?
Nothing.
She
couldn’t even remember what she looked like. She would think back to
standing over her body after the initial fall and try to conjure up hair
color, skin color, but all she could remember was the pool of red in a
sea of glittering glass.
She could see the other ghosts, though.
The hundreds of others who still rained from the sky, all still trapped
in the same deathly cycle as she was.
She didn’t talk to them.
They didn’t talk to her. They each lived in their own little bubble of
pain. They could each only fall, catch their breath, and fall again.
The
living couldn’t see them. She wondered if they could feel them. They
certainly didn’t come near them. All around Ground Zero she saw the same
dance—the living weaving around the invisible dead, speeding up their
steps to get out of the way of a falling jumper, brushing a hand across
their pants legs as matterless gore splattered up from the impact. She
wondered if she and her fellow ghosts were why the site had stayed empty
for so long. Each year, as people gathered on the site for their
memorial, she would hear them talk about bureaucracy, red tape,
financial woes, lawsuits, respect for the families of the dead. She
didn’t believe a word of it. No force on earth could keep Manhattan from
putting a building on a prime piece of real estate.
But eventually, build they did.
Between falls, she watched, rapt, as the steel beams climbed into the sky.
Sometimes,
she wished she could take in the details of the construction work on
the upper floors as she fell. But every time, the animal fear took over
right from the start. Every time, it was the same. She was nothing but a
frozen moment, repeatedly playing out exactly the same way.
She
quickly learned to keep away from the construction workers so they could
do their jobs without having to step around her. The other ghosts did
the same. They were uniformly polite in their silent suffering.
As
the new tower grew, a memorial was constructed where the old ones once
stood. She would land next to the waterfalls that poured into the old
buildings’ footprints, pick herself up, and stare at the water as it
flowed down into a churning mist. She tried to find her name among the
lists of the dead, but none of the names looked familiar to her. Out of
the corners of her eyes, she could see the other ghosts looking for
themselves as well. She suspected that none of them had any better luck
than she did. She wandered through the museum, looking at the
photographs, and finding no images of people jumping from the buildings
that day. It was as if they were some shameful taboo. It was as if they
had never existed.
The memorial wasn’t any comfort to her. It
didn’t bring her any closer to knowing who she was, or really, who she
had been before she died. She was still a ghost. She still fell.
Maybe she could find answers elsewhere.
For
a while now, she’d been feeling less stuck to the site. As the new
building went up and the memorial and museum were completed, she could
feel herself coming loose, bit by bit, but it had never occurred to her
to try to leave until just now. How many years had it been? She didn’t
want to know.
She stepped off the site for the first time in her unlife.
All
around her, she could see the other ghosts coming to the same
realization as they, too, left the site and started cautiously exploring
the world around them.
New York City was in places familiar, in places bewildering.
Had
she only been visiting the Twin Towers that day? Was she not a New York
City regular? That, she didn’t know. She read an ad on the side of a
bus and wondered why it said the same thing twice before realizing that
half of it was in Korean. She knew Korean? Was this a clue to her past?
But then she read the headlines on a Chinese newspaper and a taxi ad in
Spanish, and realized that it meant nothing. Everything about her meant
nothing.
And then she was falling again.
She took several
short jaunts into the neighborhoods around the Towers, always being
dragged back to fall from the window that no longer existed to land on
the precise bit of pavement that was similarly nonexistent, before
deciding to take a more ambitious walk.
That was the day she learned that they weren’t alone.
Standing
at the base of the Empire State Building, she stifled a scream as she
watched a small plane crash into the upper floors. Not again. Not
another one. Weren’t the Twin Towers enough? A body flew from the gaping
hole that had been torn through the side of the building, but no one on
the street seemed to notice a thing.
Another ghost, with a ghost of an airplane creating a ghost of a hole in the building.
And
then came the rain of jumpers, hitting the pavement or phantom cars in a
staccato rhythm of death. No one seemed to notice. They were ghost
jumpers, just like her, stuck in the same never-ending cycle.
One woman, lying on the crumpled hood of an old-fashioned limousine, looked positively serene.
She
ran across the street to take a closer look, but the woman sat up,
staring dumbly at her torn stockings, and moaned, “Oh god, make it
stop.”
“I can hear you!” she gasped. “Oh my god, I can hear you!
Can you hear me? I haven’t talked to anyone in so long. This is
wonderful!”
The woman just covered her beautifully made-up face
and moaned again, a long, keening sound that seemed to come from a place
far deeper than her body could hold. “It never ends. It never ends.”
“What do you mean? How long have you been falling?”
The woman turned wild eyes to her. “Where did you come from?”
“The Twin Towers.”
“I saw them rise and fall. A new one’s rising, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“But you’ll fall from the old ones forever. No one’s going to forget you.”
“Forget me? What do you—”
But
the words were ripped from her mouth as she found herself back at the
North Tower, leaping through the window, and clawing at the air for ten
long seconds before hitting bottom again.
She could talk to the dead, just not the Towers’ dead.
But she didn’t like what she’d heard, and wasn’t sure she wanted to hear more.
She
walked to the memorial park and stared at the waterfall cascading into
the ground where her Tower had once stood. The living wove around her as
she stood there, unmoving, not caring for once that she was bothering
anyone. She was a sentinel of pain. She saw it on the faces of the
people doing their little dances to avoid walking through her. It wasn’t
just this memorial that disturbed them, it was those who were left
behind.
Why wouldn’t it end?
How did that woman even know?
From the look of her clothes, she’d been jumping for at least half a century.
She looked down and felt the echo of her fall in the movement of the water.
In a way, it was the perfect memorial.
Why
was she still here? Wasn’t she supposed to move on? Did she even
believe in an afterlife? She couldn’t remember. There was so much she
couldn’t remember.
Maybe she hadn’t believed. Maybe that was the problem.
But what was the point in some god punishing her if she didn’t remember why she was being punished?
She
found an old church nearby, walked through the iron gate, through the
front door, and stood facing the altar, waiting to see if she felt
anything. But she didn’t feel any different here than she did at the
Towers, or on her walks. It was just as cold as it was everywhere else,
even when she stood in the postcard-perfect beams of sunlight streaming
down through the massive windows.
Maybe she needed to pray to
actually feel something. But she couldn’t find the words. Has she known
them in life, or was this yet another wished-for revelation about her
past that really meant nothing?
An old man sat on a badly-scuffed
bench off to the side of the room, his head bowed in silent prayer, and
she sat down as close to him as she dared. If there was a god out there
listening to this man’s prayer, maybe he’d see her and realize that he’d
forgotten to take her when she’d died.
She waited.
And then she was yanked away to fall again.
So that was her answer.
She
didn’t feel much like walking anymore. The few longer trips she tried
showed her a city full of people jumping from or being pushed out of
buildings, all still going through the motions for countless years after
their deaths. She couldn’t deal with them. It was bad enough to be
stuck in this endless loop herself, but seeing it played out across the
city was just too much.
But some days, she would step off of the
site and cross the street, if only to get away just a little bit. She
needed to prove to herself that she could still leave if she wanted to.
That her eternity wouldn’t be completely made up of monotonous terror.
She’d sit on the curb, stretching her legs into the street, watching as
cabs swerved to avoid hitting her ghostly feet.
When the new tower’s skeleton was nearly complete, she had a visitor.
He
was young, a teenaged boy, dressed in short pants and a cap, like
something out of an old black and white movie. He was soaking wet, both
hands clasping the tattered life jacket that was draped around his neck.
“You!” he screamed.
She tucked her feet up and stared at him, puzzled. “Where did you come from?”
“The East River. We were almost gone, until you happened.”
At that, she was on her feet. “Almost gone? You mean we can go away?”
“People
were forgetting about us. We were finally fading. And then you!” He
jabbed a finger at her. “You! You made them start talking about us
again! We weren’t the biggest mass death in the city anymore!”
“So if people forget us—”
“I hate you!”
She heard a splash as he was pulled away, a gurgle.
But she didn’t care about that. She knew the answer now. People had to forget them. Then they’d move on.
She stared across the street at the memorial park, and felt her hopes plummet.
That was never going to happen. They were going to be remembered forever.
She crumpled to the ground and beat it with her fists, howling like an animal at the unfairness of it all.
And then she fell again.
And again. And again. And again.
But now, every time she landed, she screamed.
She
screamed at the pavement, she screamed at the memorial fountain, she
screamed at the visitors, she screamed at the people working on the new
tower. She would step off the site, stand in the middle of the sidewalk,
and scream at the people walking by. She would stand in the middle of
the street and scream at taxis who would swerve and honk at the other
drivers as if it were their fault.
She hated them for remembering her. She hated the whole world for making her a repeating memorial of terror.
The
boy kept coming back, standing at the periphery, spewing hate at
whichever ghost was the closest. And the ghosts would scream back, their
voices a chorus of anguish and betrayal.
The site was filled with their screams.
How could anyone not hear them?
That boy—he’d been screaming for...how long? A century?
They’d brought him back. Their deaths had brought him back.
But it wasn’t her fault.
She’d had to jump.
It wasn’t her fault.
She’d been suffocating. She’d needed air.
She needed air.
She needed it now.
She
staggered off of the site, gasping for breath. This time, a woman was
waiting for her. She looked young, but with old eyes. Her dress was long
and simple, her hair messily pinned up, and there was soot on her pale
face. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop screaming.”
“I have every damned right to scream.”
“You’re too loud.”
“I don’t care! If you had any idea—”
“Of
course I have an idea!” the woman shouted back. “We’re all jumpers. All
of us who are left behind, we’re jumpers. Surely you’ve noticed that by
now, or are you stupid?”
“That boy was wet. He didn’t jump, he drowned.”
“You mean that boy from the Slocum? He jumped into the river. History only makes ghosts out of those who try to fly.”
Before either of them could say anything else, woman was snatched away, screaming.
And then she was back in the air, falling, landing.
She
screamed her frustration into the air, pounding on the pavement with
her fists, and looked up to see the woman from the fire looming over
her. “I said stop it!”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
“We can hear you all the way over at the Triangle building. Everyone can hear you.”
She
pushed herself up off of the pavement and snarled, “Good. If they won’t
forget us, then they should hear us.” She tried to storm off, but the
woman stepped in front of her.
“They can’t hear you,” she said, gesturing at the living. “But we can.”
“Why should I care?”
“Because
we’re all we have left. We barely even have ourselves. Can you remember
what you look like? What your name was? If you had children? What you
did for a living? If you were rich or poor? We’re just pieces of people,
not actual people.”
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”
“So
have a little respect for the rest of us and stop screaming. There’s
too many of you. You’re too loud. We just….” The woman looked like she
was about to cry. “For the love of God, we just want a little peace.”
She
spat out a laugh. “Oh, please. We don’t get to have peace. Whatever the
hell we have, it’s the opposite of peace. You’ve been around long
enough. You should get that.”
“We’re here until we’re forgotten,”
the woman said. “And you and I will never be forgotten. If a pack of
girls jumping out of a burning factory could learn to stop screaming,
then so can you. Have a little courtesy for your fellow ghosts.”
“I’m going to spend eternity reliving my death. Screaming is the only logical—”
And then she felt the wind tearing by her as she fell, again.
When she hit the ground, she lay there, staring up at the sky, not able to summon the energy to pick herself up.
Why
shouldn’t she scream? She was a walking beacon of pain, the icy feeling
that trailed down someone’s spine as they visited her death site. She
had every right to scream. She should scream without stopping until the
end of time.
But instead, she cried.
She curled onto her side and sobbed until she felt empty, which didn’t take long at all.
It must have been because there was so little of her left.
She
repeated that thought, and rolled over onto her back, letting the sun
wash through her insubstantial form as she mulled it over.
There
really wasn’t very much of her, was there? Like the woman from the fire
said, she was just a piece of a person, just the horrific slice of a
woman’s life as she died. The rest of the woman was who knew where—maybe
heaven, maybe hell, maybe reborn into a new body, maybe nothing but
worm food.
Wherever the rest of her was, she was missing this
part. This death part. The part that lingered here in the shadow of the
non-existent Towers.
How wonderful it must be not to be saddled with those last seconds of her life.
She
sat up, staring down at the ground that all those years ago had been
stained red with her blood. How strange to think that the rest of her
could be out there, somewhere, not burdened with this memory.
Maybe her unlife wasn’t a curse. Maybe it was history’s gift to the woman she once was.
If so, that was a greater gift than anyone could ever know.
She
looked over at the shouting boy and the soot-covered woman who was now
lecturing another of her fellow Tower jumpers, and wondered if they’d
ever had this thought.
Maybe this was the right way to stop the screaming.
She
picked herself up, walked over to the memorial, and selected a female
name at random from the list. Maybe that was the woman she’d once been.
She had a nice name. She hoped she’d been a nice person. She hoped she
was having a lovely afterlife.
She looked around the memorial, found a visitor scanning the list of names, and decided that she’d be that woman’s sister today.
“It’s all right,” she told the woman. “Your sister doesn’t remember what happened to her. She’s at peace.”
She reached out to stroke the young woman’s hair, and for once, the living didn’t flinch away from her.
Out
of the corners of her eyes, she saw a couple of her fellow jumpers stop
screaming and stare at her with expressions of astonishment.
She smiled back at them.
She hadn’t smiled since she’d died.
It felt good.
And then she fell again.
But it was all right. At least, it was once she landed.
Because
there was no clarity in death, no dignity. And history didn’t fulfill
any grand purpose when it plucked jumpers from the sky.
But perhaps there was a purpose to her suffering.
And that was enough.
JENNIFER
PELLAND lives outside Boston with an Andy, three cats, and an
impractical amount of books. Her short story collection, Unwelcome
Bodies, was published by Apex in 2008 and contains her Nebula-nominated
story “Captive Girl.” She’s also a belly dancer and occasional radio
theater performer. For pictures of the aforementioned cats, plus links
to her various blogs, visit www.jenniferpelland.com.
CUE: Me running for my life. The zombies
didn’t really chase you, as much as they loomed menacingly. There was something
in their demeanor that signaled they were the zombies—that they were changed
and not like the rest of us. Of course, I had heard the rumors about the inner
cities and that people were looting and rioting in the streets. But hell, they
were my streets. And I never believed
white folks until I saw evidence for myself. Call it a survival mechanism.
Survival
was what had me running for my life at that moment. I had been out hustling
when I realized that perhaps zombies did exist. Now, hustling may seem like a
questionable occupation, but really it just meant that I was working. At
Walmart, no less. I was a sales associate, which was a fancy term for cashier.
It wasn’t a Walmart in my own neighborhood—there weren’t any there. I was in
some ritzy part of town where people actually spent good money on Kleenex to
wipe their noses instead of using plain toilet paper like the rest of us.
I
was waiting on some chick who had too much money to spend on dyeing her hair a
color that no human being had ever been born with, when suddenly she reach out
to touch me. You have to understand the dynamic in this situation before you
realize that this was odd. These people didn’t touch me; most of them placed their
money on the roller to keep from touching me. And they didn’t care if their money or sometimes
their credit cards rolled right down the hatch, they’d just take out more.
So when this woman reached for me, I
recoiled out of reflex. Then she leaned in and whispered, “It doesn’t hurt. I
just need to touch you, to taste you." Her eyes rolled toward the back of
her head for a moment while she sniffed the air, evidently smelling me.
I
looked at the woman, and then around the store. Almost everyone there was
staring back at me. Over in the corner near the door, a large white man
dropped to the floor and several people crowded in, attacking him. I stared at
them long enough to know that I should probably get my black ass out of there.
I picked up the biggest weapon I could find—an extra long, extra hard salami
roll—and backed slowly toward the door. Then I ran my black ass right back to
the one part of world where I knew I’d be safe. The projects.
CUE:
How all this went down. When one homeless man eats another on the streets of
Chicago, it’s unfortunate; if he eats a businessman on his way home from
the office, it’s a tragedy; and when it happens on the six o’clock news, it's a national emergency.
It
started in the inner cities. Large, dark gangs of the homeless and street
people began looting and attacking. The media dubbed it “crime sprees typical of the
demographic”—as if random homeless people across the nation had the
means or funding to stage a revolt on their own. They urged everyone not to panic, of
course, while showing brutal scenes of people rioting in the streets, which
caused the natural reaction of…panic.
Inside
the cities, there was chaos. No one knew how to contain them, at first thinking
they were simply out of control—marching for some form of civil
rights that they had long since gotten. Then, more and more began to join their
ranks. It was rumored that people were dying in the streets by the hundreds.
Finally, the news called them an “unstable horde,” which sought to undermine the very
idea of our society.
CUE:
The mass flooding of news media into the cities—to become lunch. Actually, if anyone
knew anything about the media, they'd realize that no one could have a filling
meal from the bastards; at best, they could be a light snack. But everyone
outside of the cities watched on in horror and astonishment, tucked safely within
the comfort of their suburban homes.
At that point, the police and military were
sent out to stabilize the massive crowds, and everyone across the country
finally began to feel safe again. Soon the police and military were fighting with the hordes. Television depicted
images of uniformed officers attacking other uniformed officers. The cops were
armed with batons and guns but didn’t bother to use them as they stormed
through the barricades followed closely by the homeless. And they were eating each other. As the camera zoomed
in, the entire country saw—in an endless loop that played day and night—a
large cop grab another and tear a small, superficial, gash into his
cheek. It was in L.A. this time. The bitten man stumbled backward as several
others swarmed in, crowding him. Finally, he was completely out of the camera
shot and presumed dead.
Soon,
we realized that the dead didn’t stay dead. Like zombies.
CUE:
All the experts on national talk shows discussing the walking dead. The implausibility
of the idea. Or the real-life incident that was supposed to have happened
somewhere that no one could agree on. Whatever. It didn’t matter. If there was a scientist or “expert” to be found, they were put on TV.
By
this time it didn’t really matter what the experts had to say because people
outside the city were being attacked, too. The hordes abandoned the cities en
mass, in the same way that everyone with any means to do so left it eventually.
Only, the zombies didn’t care about property values. They didn’t really seem to care about anything
except hunting people down and killing them.
There
were rumors that a bullet to the head would not kill them. It was hard to say,
at first, because anyone who ever got close enough to them didn’t really live to tell about it. But it
was clear that these zombies weren’t quite your average drop dead, get
up, roam the countryside eating brains zombies. And they weren’t drugged out on puffer fish juice
either. They…talked. Which meant they were smart. They were said to have
some kind of social agenda—they spoke of evolution and social change. No one listened.
One by one entire, cities began to overhaul
themselves—though I wasn’t sure what overhaul meant. It eventually became
clear that the zombies weren’t looting in the cities as had previously been
reported; they were infecting the
cities, one person at a time. They weren’t stealing, they were changing. No one likes change. It scares
people.
All
these things the experts discussed over and over again while the average people
locked away in their homes were eaten into zombies. Until the day the
electricity stopped working.
CUE:
Me. The idiot who tried to go to work at Walmart during this madness, and who
now had to figure out how to get the electricity back on, or at least find a
working, not-currently-in-use generator to keep twenty adults and twice as many
children able to see how to take a piss without threatening to burn the
building down with candles. But the lights weren’t the only problem; it was the electricity
in general. You see, Carl’s grandmother used a ventilator to breathe. Carl was twelve
years old and sat by the woman’s side night and day. Now he and a few others watched for
signs of distress and used a hand-held breathing pump to keep her alive. This
couldn’t go on for much longer.
The problem, as I saw it, was that if the
zombies were as smart as everyone said they were, they had probably cut the
electricity, and if they were really
smart, they already knew we were there. Thus, leaving would in essence be
opening ourselves up for trouble. But I dealt in odds—whatever was the best
option at the moment. I’m a kid of the streets; I was born here, and I was sure
I’d die here. I was okay with that. At that moment, my best option was to at
least try to get the electricity back on. The bad part was that I had to do it
during a zombie attack.
***
“You
sure about this, kid?”
Japa
was old and had earned the right to call anyone kid. But he called me that
because that was what everyone called me. Always had. Japa had lived in this
building for as long as I could remember. We all had. He was a city man, a
long-time resident of the streets, he said, but a short-time visitor of life.
He fancied himself a poet; everyone else considered him a wise man. His white
hair of wool sat nearly five inches high on his head, and when he stared at
you, his eyes seemed darker than his black skin.
“Not
really.” I didn’t really look into Japa’s eyes. He was much taller than me. “But supplies are low, and even with
the candles we got, it’ll be completely dark within a week. And we have to try to
do something for Carl—he’ll lose it if she dies. You know that.”
Japa
stared at me, but I ignored him and continued loading my backpack. I didn’t expect to be gone long, but just in
case something went wrong, I needed to have provisions. I hadn’t left the building since that day.
None of us had. There were advantages to living in the housing projects when
some like this went down.
CUE:Hollywood
Hills housing development in southwest Atlanta, Georgia. A run-down place
that’s supposed to conjure images of beautiful, comfortable flats with happy
families that are meant to make the uptown folks feel happy about where they
spent money, and even happier that they didn’t have to stay there themselves.
The Hills was a place where people cared about each other, took food to the
sick, and defended themselves against outside threats, whatever those might be.
Right then, those threats were the walking dead. Prior to that they had been
the police officers who attacked whoever they thought looked “suspicious;” a
white man in a big black Cadillac who roamed the neighborhood and got too
handsy with the little girls; or anyone who thought that the people in
Hollywood Hills were weak and vulnerable because of our lack of money.
We
didn’t have money, but we refused to be victims. The police regularly got rocks
thrown at them, or, as terrible as the thought is, they got shot at after
particularly brutal beatings of the men of the complex. The Cadillac man was
dragged from his car and beaten by the corner dealers. He refused to press
charges. Others were handled as needed. People had a right to protect their
homes. That didn't change just because you lived in a poor neighborhood.
In
fact, some may say that our special garden variety of zombie was actually less
threatening than the brutal police or rich perverts who had roamed our streets
previously. At least they weren’t licensed by corrupt laws. That was how I saw it. It was
how a lot of people saw it.
After the news warned us to stay in the
house, each separate building in the Hollywood Hills complex took caution
however they saw fit. Our building barricaded the doors. There were only two
ways out of the building. In the beginning, it had been meant to ensure that
people were effectively caged like animals, but after the zombie attack, it
ensured that we only had two doors to guard. Of course, that also meant there
were only two ways to escape. But you had to take what you had—and we had
children to protect. Then we pulled together and rationed the food and
necessary items (at the end of the world, certain things become more valuable
than others: batteries, flashlights, meds, etc.). We put three armed guards who
worked in shifts on each door. The building was run like an old-fashionedboarding school: everyone ate, everyone had a job.
The
end of the world had happened three weeks earlier. We weren’t really sure what
had happened since then, only heard the vague TV or radio reports. Although we
were pretty well stocked on food—shit, that’s what food stamps were for—now
that the electricity was off, the food would go bad if we didn’t find a way to
stop it.
We
radioed each of the other buildings by walkie-talkie and told them our plans.
Each building agreed and sent one person out with me. There were a total of
five of us: me; Allen, an unemployed electrician from building two; Simms, a
dealer from number one; Slow Walker, a user from five; and from building four,
there was Tiny, a giant man who no one really knew anything about.
I
exited my building after scoping as best as I could through the
twelve-by-twenty-inch window. The guards opened the door quickly and scanned
the area, guns drawn, and I stepped out into the new world. The air smelled
fresh—not like inside. It was quiet. Too quiet. Nothing moved or
sang or chirped or breathed. Not even me. As soon as I took a step, the sound
of my foot crunching on leaves was the loudest sound I had heard in weeks. I
stopped and looked around. Still nothing stirred. Then I ran to number five as
fast as I dared.
We
had all agreed on the walkie that we’d meet there, since it was closer to
the street and still hidden from view of onlookers, or in this case the walking
dead. They must have seen me coming because they opened the door, and I slid
inside just before it closed.
“What’s up, Kid?" Slow Walker slapped
my palm and hit me with the customary one arm hug. The man was tall, mostly
legs, and took long, deliberate strides when he walked.
“Same
shit, different day." I looked around. Someone was missing. “Where’s Allen?”
Simms
nodded toward deeper into the building. “Taking a piss. Nerves.”
The
halls were almost completely dark, and we all waited for the man in silence. In
shadow, Tiny looked bigger than he ever had in the daylight. Slow Walker was
almost his height, but had nowhere near his bulk. Simms was probably the
baddest person in that room—carried a gun whether there were zombies roaming around
outside or not—but only stood about five feet tall. She called herself a
bitch, but dared anyone else to.
Allen
came down the hall with a flashlight, zipping his fly, the light bouncing up and
down across the walls. I’d known him about a year, since he and his family had moved
to Hollywood Hills. His wife was close to my mother. He nodded when he saw me.
The
main discussion was over whether to drive or take a car. Slow Walker insisted
that he’d heard vehicles driving past steadily over the last few
weeks, as if nothing had changed. We didn’t really believe him, though. The man
was high half the time, and the other half he was trying to get high. Either
way, we’d be harder to catch by slow-moving zombies if we took a car, and
easier to be seen by other survivors. So it was decided. Simms had a Navigator
that she’d bought from the auction for eight grand. We took that.
The
roads were empty. Nothing human moved. A dog ran across the road in front of the
SUV, stopped, looked at us as if it’d never seen a person before. It wasn’t too confused by the power dynamic,
however, because as we got closer it ran away to keep from getting run over.
But other than that, except for the old news media images that we’d all seen, and the woman at Walmart
trying to hold my hand, I would swear that nothing at all had happened. Where
was everyone, we wondered.
We
tried the radio in the car, but none of the stations worked anymore. It was for
the best. We were scared and any little news would have just made it worse. In
the backseat, Slow Walker sat between Allen and Tiny. The man’s long, boney fingers twitched, as if
aching to touch something. He watched them, looking up every now and again to
see if anyone noticed. I watched from my passenger side visor’s mirror. Then Allen reached out and
touched the tall man’s hand, wrapping his fingers around both of Slow Walker’s hands to slow the trembling. It was
such a deliberate show of affection, I almost smiled. Everyone knew Slow Walker
was a junkie. Most people avoided him. As did I.
Just
as I felt as if I was intruding on this personal matter, Slow Walker lifted his
eyes to mine and stared at me through the mirror. Junkies didn’t like to be stared at. I had
forgotten obvious social graces while stuck in that building for those weeks. I
closed the visor and decided to mind my own damn business.
CUE:
The Southwest Utility complex, which was only about a mile and a half away from
The Hills. We figured that from there Allen could get in and work out how to
get things turned back on. He assured us that he knew hardly anything about the
utility company’s main supply, but we thought it wouldn’t hurt to try. Allen agreed that he
would do what he could when he got there.
We
ran into the first hoard there. They stood around the gate, staring at
something inside. There were hundreds of them, just standing around. Simms
pulled the car off to the side, hidden from view. I pulled out a pair of
binoculars (one of those necessary items in an apocalypse) and watched.
They moved slowly, deliberately. I began to wonder if they were really zombies
at all. There weren’t any missing limbs, and there were no abnormal bloody, torn
gashes in anyone. Some held hands and swayed counterclockwise in a circle, as
if they were meditating or something. I handed the binoculars over to Simms.
She let out a soft gasp.
“What
is it?” Tiny asked. She handed the binoculars to the back seat.
Each took a turn watching the group of seemingly normal people. “What are they doing?”
“My
guess is ensuring that people like us don’t get in. The damnedest thing, though.
They look so…normal. Why do they look so normal?" Simms was asking
a rhetorical question, and it wasn’t like we actually knew the answer, so
no one responded.
“I said why the fuck do they look so
normal, goddamn it!"
Man, I had misjudged that one.
“I
was thinking the same thing,” I said, just to respond. Then I started thinking
about it. “What if that’s the plan, really. They’re supposed to be smart, right?Well, what if they’re smart enough to
disguise themselves as normal people?Then all they have to do is wait.”
“Wait.
Wait for what?” Allen asked; his voice was trembling.
“Us.”
Suddenly,
someone screamed. Loudly. The group parted as two people were dragged through
the crowd and placed on the ground. Placed—not thrown, I noted. The zombies
moved back and forth, fidgeting, their hands opening and closing, as if they
were anxious. But something was keeping them from attacking. The two women—I could see that now—hugged each other.
“Shit
shit shit shit shit,” Simms kept repeating behind me. “We can’t just sit here. Damn it to hell. We
can’t."
Before anyone could stop her, she jumped out of the car and crouched behind the
bushes and drew her gun.
“Shit.” I jumped out behind her and motioned
for the others to stay in the car. I would get Simms and bring her back. If I
couldn’t, I’d dash back and drive away. Between the five of us we had
seven guns, and that was only because Simms had three. We couldn’t afford to lose her. But even so, we
couldn’t help those women and we could die trying. When I reached
the bushes, I bent down beside her and whispered, “What the hell are you doing?"
She
ignored me and watched the dead play with their food.
One
of the women stood up and pulled out a gun. She helped the other woman to her
feet. But the second woman was wobbly and her leg looked broken. She leaned on
the first, who held the hoard off by gunpoint.
“I swear to God, I’ll shoot.” The
woman was screaming for no reason; even I heard her from my position. The gun
quivered in her hand, pointing back and forth at the dead people in the crowd.
The group didn’t make a move for the women as they backed away. They couldn’t
get far, though; there were a lot of zombies and only two of them. Finally, one
of the hoard broke away and moved toward the women, its hand outstretched. The
thing seemed to be reasoning with her. Reasoning?
Simms turned to look at me. The woman
fired; the shot went through the zombie’s head. The impact threw the body
backward, its hands still outstretched as it fell to the ground. Just as the
zombie fell, the woman with the broken leg lost her balance and fell to the
ground. The dead simply looked on as another walked forward to take the fallen
zombie's place, and it, too, was shot—this time in the chest. It fell too. So, I thought, the reports were wrong. They
do die.
As
each zombie died, another moved in to take its place, and it, too, died. Until,
of course, the woman ran out of bullets. The gun clicked over and over again
before she realized that nothing was coming out. The hoard stopped advancing.
They just stopped, looked at the women. Then something very strange happened.
A
small child walked from within the crowd, placed her tiny hands on the cheek of
the woman with the broken leg, and wiped away the woman’s tears. The girl began to cry too.
Before the woman on the ground could stop herself, she scooped the girl into
her arms and hugged her. The child’s plaits were held together by large
red bows, and the two held onto each other as if they belonged together.
Seeing
this, the woman with the gun sank to her knees and burst out crying. She
screamed loud and long. Finally, one of the hoard, a man with a discernible
limp, walked to her and held the woman. Just as she was about to sink into his
embrace, something snapped in her. I could see it in her posture; she stiffened
and jerked away from him. Suddenly, she reached out and punched the zombie, who
recoiled backward. Not in pain, I could tell, but in shock. He actually looked
sad that she had rejected him.
I
all but forgot about Simms or the others in the car as I watched the woman beat
and claw her way through the crowd of undead. She dashed toward us, hiding in
the bushes. As soon as she was so close I could smell her sweat and fear, one
of the creatures tackled her and brought her to the ground. He spoke softly,
soothingly. “Don’t fight. You may not survive if you’re injured." Still, she fought,
kicking and screaming. He grabbed her shoulders. “Don’t.”
Another
man walked over and helped her to her feet. He held the woman’s wrist tightly, but as gently as
possible. I remember thinking that I shouldn’t know these things. But I felt like I
had somehow gotten into their heads, or that I could read their body language
better than the average human. It was as if they were completely open, like all
of their feelings and actions were gliding on the airwaves, infecting everyone
around. Beside me, even Simms had calmed down, her .45 automatic hanging limply
at her side.
The
second man let the woman go and spoke clearly, calmly. “We don’t want to have to kill you. There have
been too many deaths today. You have taken seven, and there are only two of you
to replace those of us who were lost. They sacrificed themselves to protect
you. We won’t accept any more losses." As he spoke, his hands
twitched, and he began to open and close them, as if to keep them busy. “You belong with us, sister." He
reached out his hand to her.
She
looked around, searching for something, someone to help her. We continued to
hide. When no one came to her rescue, she reluctantly grabbed his large, dark
fingers. Shaking, he brought her hand to his mouth and bit her, tearing the
skin only slightly. The rest walked to her, some scratching, other simply
touching her as if to affirm and welcome her into the fold.
After
a moment of this interaction, the woman fell to the ground, trembling. Two
people from the crowd carried her to her friend, who had also passed out.
Someone covered the pair with a thick, colorful blanket. They waited.
“What
the hell is going on, Kid?” Simms asked me. “What are these things?”
The
hoard turned toward us slowly, as if they’d heard her. They stared through the
shrubs that hid Simms and me, directly at us. But none of them moved to attack.
“We
better go.” We ran to the car and pulled away. Through the passenger
side mirror I watched as the hoard watched us leave.
“What
in the hell just happened?” Tiny asked.
“I
don’t
know. But those things…” I didn’t know what to say. “…if those things are zombies, I’ll fucking eat my shoe.”
In
the back seat, Slow Walker was fast asleep. He startled, mumbling something
under his breath.
“How
long has he been like this?” I asked.
“Pretty
much the whole time,” Allen said.
“Who
in the hell’s idea was it to bring him?" Tiny sounded pissed. “He’s always like this. It never even
matters if he’s high or not. He always shakes like he’s withdrawing or something. This is
stupid." Something told me that Tiny was scared, and this was simply a way
for him to vent his frustration, so I didn’t say anything to him about Slow
Walker. The truth was that I agreed with him. I had no idea why his building
chose for him to go with us, considering his history. But now that I thought
about it, perhaps I did know. Perhaps they wanted to get rid of him. They had
probably simply chosen the most expendable person in the building. What did it
matter if he didn't come back?He was
all but useless anyway. I had volunteered to go, and Tiny had probably been
chosen because of his brute strength, as had Simms. Walker had simply been the
last person anyone cared about. It was sad, but that was how things were in
this new world of zombies and survival of the fittest.
I
thought about the housing projects in which I had lived my entire life and the
zombies that I had seen and heard only moments before. Perhaps that was always
how things had been, and they were really the ones who were different. Hadn’t seven died in order to save just two
people?Who was I kidding? They were
zombies. They were probably lying to get her to do what they wanted. Well, why
not just attack her?
I
didn’t
like where my thoughts were taking me. Zombies were the bad guys—if you could call them guys—and we were the good guys. If you’d asked me at the time who “we” were, I wouldn’t have quite known. I had lived twenty
years knowing that I was just as expendable as Slow Walker. Like him, the only
thing that I had done wrong was be born the wrong… everything. Nothing about me was
acceptable within my own country. It was so bad that I was honestly considering
the insane option of being a zombie over my own life.
***
The
hardware store was two miles from the utility complex and three and a half
miles from The Hills. If we rushed, we could get there, get gas, and get back
home before dark and before any of the memories of the day had a chance to etch
themselves into our brains. I hoped.
Inside,
we each grabbed a shopping cart and headed toward the generators. I wanted to
get as much water and other supplies as possible too, because you could never
have too much stuff. The store looked deserted. There were no lights, but the
big front windows lit up most of the inside of the building. It was amazing,
but almost nothing in the store looked touched. It was as if no one had thought
of coming here, yet. I was sure that any Walmart or somewhere just as
commercial would be bare by this point. Considering the way people behaved in
Georgia when there was only a snow alert, imagine the insanity when under the
threat of zombie attack.
Just
as I turned the corner, a man stood in my way, pointing a pistol at my head. I
stopped, didn’t say a word. In the background, I could hear the others
talking to each other, assuring each person that everything was fine. It wouldn’t be too long before they realized
they hadn’t heard my voice.
“What
the hell do you want?” the guy whispered.
I
held my hands up in the air, not wanting to piss him off. “Nothing. Just supplies and stuff.”
“Just
supplies and stuff,” the man mocked. “My supplies. My stuff." His blue
eyes shone just like they did in all the books I’d read. It looked like the man might
be getting ready to cry.
“I’m sorry, man, we didn’t mean any harm. We just needed stuff
because all the lights just went out—” Before I could finish, Tiny grabbed
the man under his arms and put him in a full nelson headlock so he couldn’t move. I walked up and took the gun
from the man.
“I’m gonna let you go, but I don’t want no shit from you or I’ll break your kneecaps, you
hear?" Tiny could be really threatening when he needed to. Actually, with
his body size, he didn’t really need to most of the time. Tiny slowly lowered the
man to the ground, and for the first, time I realized that he had lifted him
off the floor. The others came running to us, having heard Tiny.
“What’s going on?” Allen asked.
“Nothing.
This fool pulled a gun on me."
“Who
are you?” Simms said.
“This
was my place before you guys broke in.”
“Broke
in my ass,” she said. “The damn door was opened.”
“It
was unlocked, not opened.” The man was a smart ass.
“Fuck
you, man,” Tiny said. “It don’t belong to you no more than it belongs to us.”
Simms
squinted her eyes, got in the man’s face. “Shit, ya’ll know who this is?This here’s Cadillac Man.” Before the man could respond, she
reached out and punched him in the jaw. “You like preying on little girls,
Cadillac Man?" The man fell to the ground, holding his face.
“Are
you sure that’s him?” I asked.
She
lifted her foot and stomped his leg. “I’m sure." Simms had almost beaten
this man to death once. Looked like she relished the opportunity to finish the
job.
“Wait
a minute.” Allen stopped her before she could kick the man again. “You…you don’t know this is him.”
“The
hell I don’t. Get your goddamn hands off me.” She jerked away from him. “Ask him.”
Allen
bent down and touched the man, who jumped as if afraid. Simms sighed, not
buying any of the man’s whiny bullshit.
“Sir,
what’s
your name?" The man looked at Allen, then rolled his eyes. “She’ll hurt you and we won’t be able to stop her. What’s your name?”
“Picket,” Simms said. “That was the perv’s name.”
Still
the man did not answer. Tiny walked over and pulled the man’s wallet from his back pocket, opened
it. “Samuel
Picket.”
Simms
kicked him again. “I told you.”
“Don’t do that again,” Allen warned her.
I
looked around. Someone was missing again, and I was getting tired of having to
keep count. “Where’s Walker?”
“He
ran away," Allen said.
“The
hell you mean, he ran away?”
“I
don’t
know. I looked up and saw him dash outta of the store. He probably just needed
some air.”
Simms
walked up to Allen and grabbed his T-shirt by the absent collar. “What the hell, man? We don’t leave people, and we don’t let sick people wander around alone.”
“How
was I supposed to stop him?" He grabbed her hand tightly, and she winced
in pain.
Before the two could get started yelling at
each other again, I said, “You could have told us. We would have got him,
brought him back. What are we supposed to do now? Shit.” I looked at the man on
the floor, then out the window. It would be getting dark soon, and I didn’t
want to have to leave without Slow Walker. Why
not?
“Maybe
he’s headed home already,” Tiny said. “You know Slow Walker. He does his own
thing."
A loud
noise erupted from outside. On the floor, Cadillac Man began laughing.
CUE:
The point at which you would actually rather be in hell than deal with what’s coming next.
As
Cadillac Man lay on the floor laughing, we headed to the front of the building.
Outside, a large group of people, more than twice the size of the group we had
seen only a few hours before, stood staring--seemingly at us. The sun was
setting, but it was summertime and only seven o’clock in the evening. We had more than
an hour before the sun set completely, plunging the entire block into darkness.
It didn’t matter, though; we wouldn’t last that long.
“Shit
shit shit shit shit shit,” Simms repeated again. “We can’t get past that. Damn it. There’re too many of them.”
Behind
us, Tiny hit the floor hard. He began convulsing and shaking so hard I thought
maybe he was having a heart attack. Allen rushed to his side to help him.
Cadillac Man continued laughing. Simms reached down and hit the man with the
butt of her gun. He screamed in pain and began rocking and moaning while
holding his legs to his chest in a tight ball. Simms hit him again. Then again.
Allen
walked up and put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t kill him. Please." She kicked
him this time, not taking her eyes off Allen.
Allen
sighed. “He won’t be the same when he changes.”
She
stopped. “What?"
“He
won’t
be the same person. None of you will.”
Simms
looked at me, then back at Allen. He answered the question she didn’t have to ask. “I infected you when you when you
grabbed me. It won’t be long now." She snatched his shirt again, despite
the risk of infection and put her .45 under his chin. She would blow his brains
out; I just knew she would. For the life of me, I didn’t want to stop her. “You know I’m willing to die for this,” Allen said, finally. “You know that’s who we are. You saw it yourself.”
She
let him go, pushed him against a stack of doorknobs. “You son of a bitch. What the hell have
you done to us?”
“It’s inevitable. Evolution. Things
change, they evolve. Become better.”
“Where
the hell is Slow Walker?” I asked.
He
nodded toward the window. “Probably on his way home to help with the infected there.”
“Oh
my God.” I thought Simms was crying. Simms didn’t cry. “You sent him to infect all those
people?There’s children there.”
“It’s better this way.” He looked at me and smiled. “I changed Slow Walker in the car. You
watched it happen, Kid. It made you feel good to be a human being in that
moment, didn’t it?”
“Fuck
you.”
“I
saw you, saw your eyes. Felt what you felt while you watched me comfort him.”
“I
thought you were helping a sick man.”
“I
was.”
“You
were killing him. Taking his soul.”
Allen
shook his head as if to disagree, but he didn’t say anything. I think he felt as if
we were a lost cause.
“Why
are they out there?” I asked him.
“For all of you. They’ve come to help you through the transition. It’s hard to evolve. You need the
comfort, the connection to others to come into second being. That’s what it is, you know. A second state
of mind—one different from your own. They’ll touch you, take just a bit of
flesh, but it’s simply to become one with you. Your flesh nourishes them,
and in return, someone elses flesh will nourish you, and in this way everyone will be
connected to everyone else on the planet. We have to do it. We need to. It's
why we shake.” He looked down at his shaky hands as if contemplating some
grand theory. He rubbed them together, touched his face slightly, then
scratched just behind each of his ears. The wounds were almost unnoticeable. He
suddenly stared at me, as if he had forgotten I was there, and started right
back where he had left off: “We have to infect, need it like it’s a part of our essence. It’s in our nature. You must understand
this. But it’s better this way. Safer. No more pain or suffering. Because
if one person suffers, then all people suffer. No more people dying in the
streets for seemingly no reason at all.”
I
had a thought. “Is everyone in building two infected?”
“Changed,
yes." Allen wasn’t regretful at all. There were almost a hundred people in
that building. I hated him in that moment. I hated everything he stood for.
This wasn’t human. It didn’t matter if they cared more about each
other—that wasn’t human.
But
it was Simms who spoke out. “This is not okay just because you think your own version of
good is best. That’s not what it means to be people. This is not choice.” On the floor, Cadillac Man continued
to giggle like a madman. “Shut the fuck up,” Sims warned him.
“He’s not a threat to you.” Allen’s temperament never changed. That was
more frightening than anything else. To be human was to have emotions—different emotions. It even meant
having the wrong emotions at the wrong time. Feeling happy when someone you
didn’t
like had something bad happen to them—that was part of being human. Not
this.
“Who?
This piece of shit?” She kicked the man again. Then she just stood, as if
contemplating what to do next. She looked at me, but I had nothing. No answers.
No witty response. Her hands began to shake.
“I
still have control over me. You won’t have control over me,” she said. I wasn’t entirely sure that she was right,
and she knew she wasn’t either. Once she dropped to the floor, there was nothing
to do to change it. Allen was right; it was inevitable.
“Let
it happen, Simms. Please understand.”
On
the floor, Tiny groaned in pain. He was hurting. I could…feel it. I don’t know how I knew, but there was
something about his spirit that told me he was dying. Allen looked at him, then
at me. “You feel it, don’t you? He can’t do this alone. Let me help him. I
can help you all.”
“Hell
no.”
Simms pointed the gun at him. “Leave him the hell alone. You’ve done enough.”
“If
I don’t
help him, he will die. Do you want that?”
“Fuck
you!Don’t make this about me. You did this to
him. You did it!”
“We
did it for him, Simms. I scratched him, yes, infected him. But I didn’t kill him. You’ll do that if you don’t let me help him.”
Simms
used her gun hand to wipe the sweat forming on her forehead, and in that moment
I thought she was losing her mind. She was so upset. I was worried about what
she would do. I think Allen was worried too. She was unpredictable. Finally,
Simms turned her anger on the one person she felt justified to harm: Cadillac
Man. She pointed the gun at him.
“Don’t— " She shot the man in the head,
point blank. Allen shook his head. “It’s not necessary. Everyone can survive
this.”
I
stared at the two people before me. Thought about what he’d said. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to survive it.
But what would my mother do without me?My building was depending on me to return. What would they do without
me?I couldn’t just leave them any more than I had
been able to leave without finding out where Slow Walker had gone. I just
couldn’t.
Then
I understood about the lights and why they hadn’t just stormed in, changing people.
There would be too many losses. The casualties would be too high. They didn’t want that. They wanted people like
me, like Slow Walker, who would return to their homes to ease the transition.
They wanted mules.
Simms
closed her eyes. I think she had come to the same revelation that I had. Her
hands shook so badly now that she held her gun with both hands. Suddenly, she
raised the gun once more, pointed it at Allen, and before the man could
respond, she shot him. Outside, the hoard groaned, screamed in pain. It was as
if they knew he was dead. It would not be long before they stormed the building
and killed or changed all of us. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
She
looked at me. “I can’t do it, Kid. I just can’t— " There was something in her
eyes, and I knew. I just knew that she meant it. “Simms!” I screamed and ran toward her just as
she blew her chin out through her brain.
I
stood in the giant one-room store for longer than a moment. Longer than two.
Quite a few longer than I probably even remember. I had a choice, contrary to
what Simms had said. She'd had one too. She had chosen to die. On the floor,
Tiny screamed out in pain. His dark skin had turned an ash grey color, and I
knew that he wouldn’t make it much longer. He was going to die, and I wasn’t sure that I could live with that.
I
walked over to the door, opened it, and let a few of the hoard walk in. They
gathered around Tiny, touching him, nibbling on his exposed skin. One of them
lay down beside him, holding the big man within his arms, comforting him in a
way that I felt I could never be comforted.
But
I decided to give it a try, anyway. I was tired. If this was evolution, who was
I to stop it?I was just a stupid kid
with one shit of a choice and afraid of change.
CUE:
The End. They’ll be happy to see me home. I’ll bring others. They will help,
reaffirm, bring into the fold. I’ll be there to smooth the transition.
Things will change. I’m not sure if it’s a good change or bad change, and
that scares me. But it’s inevitable, always has been.
I
read somewhere that God is Change. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it doesn’t really matter anymore.
Chesya
Burke has published over forty short stories in
various venues including Dark Dreams:
Horror and Suspense by Black Writers,
Voices From the Other Side, and Whispers in the Night, each published by
Kensington Publishing Corp. as well as the historical, science, and speculative
fiction magazine, Would That It Were,
and many more. Several of her articles appeared in the African American National Biography, published
by Harvard and Oxford University Press, and she won the 2004 Twilight Tales
award for short fiction. Chesya attends Agnes Scott College, where she studies
creative writing and the African diaspora as it relates to race, class and
gender. Many of these themes find themselves appearing in her fiction.
