Apocalyptic Shorts (6 page)

“Do we have a chance now?”

He looks deeply at me as if he’s about to reveal a secret, then he nods. “You push the door with everything you got and don’t stop until you get to that truck.” He points his finger to a pickup truck about a hundred meters from here, I nod.

He opens his door and I open mine. I knock two black-eyeds down with the door, creating space to escape through, and then I run, and they follow me. Two half-naked black-eyeds appear ahead, coming toward me. I continue to run toward the two black-eyeds. When I get close enough, the closest black-eyed dives at me, I do the exact move Paul did on the plane, I step slightly out of the black-eyed's way and rock my fist to his jaw. He drops, but doesn’t pass out like I want him to, but he’s not finding it easy to get back up. The second black-eyed lunges at me, I kick him on the chest and he falls on his back, I fall too and quickly get back up. He throws himself at me and I duck, but I’m not fast enough. His body collides with mine and he falls over me, my back on the floor. He brings his mouth down at my face, his teeth closing and opening. My left hand finds something on the ground, I take it whatever it is and shove it into his mouth; it is a coke can. He bites down on the can and immediately forgets about me, looking at the can as if he’s discovering something new. I push him off me and get up, he’s still busy biting on the can. The other black-eyed I knocked down earlier is back up. He rockets himself at me from behind, knocking me down. I get up before he can cover me, running my feet at his face. I run, he follows. I gain a few meters lead, then I stop and turn around. He dives at me and once again I step slightly out of his way and with all of my strength, rock my fist to his jaw. He goes down, still and breathless. I think he’s out, but I don’t wait to confirm it. As I run, intense pain shoots up my arm, but I don’t let it bother me.

I glance over my shoulder and see my dad surrounded by black-eyeds, and then I hear gunshot upon gunshot.

Black-eyeds right behind me, I get to the truck and run straight inside, slamming the door behind me. The black-eyeds begin to pummel themselves at the truck, bleeding all over the window glass. I hear gunshots, and each time it sounds, a black-eyed goes down. One by one they fall to the ground till I don’t see them anymore. The door opens and Paul springs in, slamming the door.

“Does it work?”

“What?” I say, quivering.

“The truck,” he scowls, looking a little disappointed, not by the truck, but me.

“I didn’t check.” I say, looking out the window.

He moves his hand to the ignition and it finds the key. He turns it and the engine starts. He shifts the gear stick, presses the gas pedal and the truck moves.

Finally, we are in a working vehicle and we're driving out of this city. We run black-eyeds over every time one pops up in front of the truck. Some of them are running after the truck. I watch them in the side mirror as they relentlessly try to catch up, even though they are all exhausted. One by one, they stumble and fall when their legs could no longer bear the stress.

“I figured you’ve figured the way home,” I say, still looking into the side mirror.

“Yes.”

I take the phone and dial our home line, but no one answered. I dial my mom’s personal line, she still doesn’t pick up. Something is definitely wrong over there.

“Whatever this is, it’s everywhere isn’t it?” I say.

“Yes it is.”

“So that guy on the plane wasn’t a terrorist,”

“Um um,” he shakes his head.

I open the glove compartment, there's a revolver in it. I take it and check if it’s loaded, it is. I put it back.

“You should hold on to that,” he says.

“I know. Who was that woman on the phone?”

“That, that was Faye, she’s a friend.”

“She’s not just a friend dad, she’s a very dear friend. And what bothers me is not how dear you obviously are to each other, but that I've never heard of her. Why is that dad?” I look into his eyes, like I’m digging into his deepest secrets.

“Steven, there is so many things I promised myself to tell you when we get to Nevada, things about me that your mother doesn’t know. I know you’ve seen me do things today, things you didn’t think I could do, and son, that’s because I’m not really a physics teacher, that’s just a cover. I’m a CIA operative.”

I raise my eyebrows in surprise. “Really?” he nods. “Well that explains your ability to handle guns.”

“Yes, it does. It wasn’t easy keeping all of it from you and your mother, especially you. It’s why I was going to tell you everything.”

“So that woman, Faye, it’s not like you’re having an affair with her,”

He shakes his head and nervously taps his finger on the steering wheel. “Actually, we are. All those times I traveled to Africa for summits, I was on missions. She’s my partner. At first, we were just really close, but it got deeper. I love her Steven.”

“And mom?”

“You know she always comes first.”

“That’s not what I’m asking. Do you still love her?”

“As ever.”

“Then you know you have to end it.”

He heaves a sigh. “I know.” He says.

“Your friend Faye, she said something about carriers and Mars.”

“Yeah she did. She said we’re evacuating to Mars, but we have to make it to the carrier on time.”

“What is sunflower?”

“Sunflower is a code name for the Washington Monument.”

“So, you’re a spy,”

“Yes, I am.”

After five hours on the road, we enter D.C and drive straight to our house. There are dead bodies everywhere on the street. I see people I know running around for their lives, screaming for help.

We arrive at the house. The front door is open. I jump out of the truck before it fully stops and run into the house. I hear gunshots. I make my way to the living room. Mom is there, surrounded by many black-eyeds, shooting at them, and she's backed against the wall, trapped. There are so many of them and she can’t shoot them all. Paul begins to shoot, taking some of the attention away from her, but most of the black-eyeds stay with her. I pull a flowerpot from the wall and hit it to the head of a black-eyed coming at me, the flower pot shatters. I try to fight my way to her, but there is too many of them.

“Steven!” she screams. “Go!”

She continues to shoot, and then she stops, looking at me. “I love you,” she says, crying.

She turns the gun to her own head and right there in front of me, she squeezes the trigger. The sound of the shot fills me as I watch my mother go down, never to get up again. I feel my heart stop. She hits the floor and the black-eyeds go down on her, scraping on her with nails and teeth. I close my eyes and my entire body goes numb and I start to fall. Paul takes me and hauls me toward the door. My strength returns.

“No!” I scream bitterly till my lungs are empty of air.

Paul pulls me out of the house, shooting black-eyeds all the way. We run into the garage. He looks for the car key in the key box. I set the toolbox on the table, scatter its content and disassemble the box itself. I find a pistol in it. I check and see it’s loaded and fill my pockets with ammo. Paul stares at me, but I don’t stare back.

“How long have you known that was there?”

“I’ve always known.” I finally look at him, not as a sixteen-year-old boy who needs to be protected or told what to do by his father, but as a sixteen-year-old man who just watched his mother blow her own brains out.

“We should go now,” Paul says coolly.

We enter the car and drive, heading for Sunflower, the code name for the Washington Monument. We drive between buildings to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, but that don’t do us any good. The other end of the small road we are on is crowded with black-eyeds, but they are not running, they are walking, slowly, which is good, at least.

“They are grouping?” I say. “It’s why that place in Ohio was empty, they are finding themselves.”

Paul shifts the gear to 'R' and hits on the gas pedal and the car begins to reverse. The usual fast aggressive black-eyeds pour out from the other end of the road behind us, their creepy croak filling the air. Paul finds a small opening between two buildings and drives into it, hoping it's big enough, but it isn't. The car gets stuck between the buildings.

From here, we see the main road and my jaw drops when I see what is out here. There are thousands of them out here, moving together like water flow. We can’t drive through them because there's too many of them, and we can’t go back. My heart begins to pound, and immediately, I’m considering putting the gun to my head and pulling the trigger, like my mom did. Then one question crawls up my mind; why haven’t we become one of these things? I saw it in the plane, it’s not physical contact, it’s airborne whatever it is, and we’ve been around it long enough to catch it, why haven’t we? Why did most of our neighbors turned and my mom did not? That curiosity makes me want to stay alive. And since dead people don’t get answers, I have to survive to get my answers. Mom would want me to survive. I open the door and spring out like someone with a plan, but I have none.

“What are you doing?” Paul growls quietly.

I look around for a moment, asking myself the same question in my mind––
what am I doing?––
I get an idea. “We’re surrounded by tall buildings, we have a better chance of escaping this flood if we go inside.”

I don’t know if it is humanly possible to process information that fast, but he opens the door and springs out as soon as I’m done talking, he gets my point. We run to the nearest building, making out footsteps as quiet as we can. The black-eyeds are unaware of our presence, and we’ll like to keep it that way. We get to the door of the building and push, but it won’t open. Paul pushes harder and I kick, but it still doesn’t open. Paul takes two steps away from the door and looks at me, like he's waiting to see what my decision will be in this situation, then I realize, he's been doing it all along, I just haven't noticed. I draw my pistol, rack the slide and put four bullets into the glass of the door. The glass cracks, but stays together. I run into it, crashing down, and shards falling on and around me. I get up immediately and run, and he follows.

The black-eyeds turn their heads in unison when they hear the gunshots, and they charge in our direction, their creepy sound more disturbing than ever. We enter the building and they follow. We find the elevator and run into it. I hit the button to the seventh floor, the last floor. They are gaining on us fast and the freaking elevator door is crawling.
Damn! I hate elevators.
I pull out my gun and hold it out, tightening my grip on the handle every second. They are now very close, and some of them will definitely get to us before the door is completely shut. I shoot, a black-eyed drops, then I shoot again and again, dropping black-eyeds after black-eyeds. Paul pulls his gun and starts to shoot too. The elevator door finally closes. I hit the button again.

Paul stares at me as he tries to slow down his breath. “Since when do you know how to shoot a gun?”

“Since Andy Davids?”

“Andy Davids? That kid that died two years ago?”

“He was killed,” I correct him. “Andy was killed on his way home from school, and everyone at school was scared, I was, mom too, so she bought a gun. She said if Andy had been taught to be strong, he could still be alive. She’d take me to a gun shop every Friday, and we’d learn how to shoot. I got really good with targets.” I sniff.

“Your mother bought fourteen years old you a gun and taught you how to shoot? And she never mentioned it to me?”

“She said you are too gentle, too rational. She said you wouldn’t agree. She said and I quote ‘sometimes, you got to be irrational to survive, or you could end up dead like Andy’”

“Jesus,” he mutters. “I guess I’m not the only one with se––”

“Don’t even try dad,” I interrupt. “That was nothing like the things you kept from her. She was scared, and she was trying to protect me, you were away doing missions, and cheating on her.”

The elevator stops and the door slides apart. I raise my gun immediately, him too. We move to the stairs and climb out to the top of the building.

Out here, the sky is bright and the air feels consuming and easy, and friendly, but our world has changed so much that nothing can be friendly anymore, at least not permanently. For a moment I forget that I’ve spent the last hours running for my life and watched my mom died. I bite my lower lip so hard it bleeds when I remember my mom. I move to the edge and take a look down. I hear Paul stops himself from saying something, probably trying to tell me to be careful. But he must have realized I’m not a kid anymore.

“What are we doing on the roof?” he asks.

“We’re staying alive,” I say.

“Do you have a plan?”

“Yes, I have a plan.”

I walk to the other side of the roof. The next roof is lower, at thirty feet away. “We jump.” I say.

Paul walks to my side and take a very good look at the distance between the roof we are standing on and the next roof.

“You think we can jump that?”

“I can. The other roofs are almost connected, so this is going to be the only real jump.”

He looks down between the buildings and shakes his head. “We’re not going to make that.”

“Really? Then let’s make bed here and sleep.” I say. “You’re the spy, you should find these things easy.”

He looks away, stung by my comment.

“You know, I told her once. I told her I was having an affair and she laughed at it, she thought it was a joke. After that I couldn’t bring myself to tell her again.”

“You told her, and yet it continued. What was the point of telling her in the first place? To make her feel bad?” I snap and then calm down.

“No,” he says and sniffs. “I just couldn’t handle keeping so much from her. It was never easy for me Steven.”

I know letting him feel this much guilt will make it hard for him to think straight, which will therefore cut down our chance of surviving, so I decide to change the subject.

“Dad,” I say coolly. “Why are we not infected?”

“I’m not sure. Faye said some people are immune to the virus. I guess we’re lucky enough to be among those people.”