Dead of Eve (3 page)

The story unraveled. In his dominating way, he stripped every detail from me. Except my A’s. I didn’t discuss my delusions. Never.

His composure disintegrated as my report went on. His face flushed. Trenches rutted his hair from his fingers pushing through it. But he let me unfold the events without interrupting. The greenhouse. The aphid. The pitchfork. When I told him I was pulled into the pool, he gripped the edge of the counter with white knuckles.

Then I recounted the part about the spiny arm shackled to my leg. He sprang from the stool and kicked it across the room. It bounced off the wall.

“What the fuck?” He paced, keeping his distance from me. Red splotched his face and neck.

He paused before me, his control on a brittle leash. “You went outside. Oh wait…No. Not only did you go outside, you were armed with a pair of scissors? Are you fucking stupid?”

Probably, but I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut while his temper roared.

“Okay. Fine. We’re going to make this real clear.” He pointed a shaky finger at me. “Absolutely no going outside alone.” He dropped his hand to the counter and blinked at me. “Nod your head.”

Feeling like a sixteen year old with a bad report card, I nodded.

“And
if
…I repeat…
if
you have to leave this house alone”—he paused—“we’re talking about the house on fire here.” He played with his goatee, probably considering other scenarios. “If you have to egress alone, under no circumstances do you do so without your shotgun, carbine, side arm and vest.”

I nodded again.

He paced a few laps around the island, pausing at the floor-length windows each time to survey the backyard. When it came to me, he was all bark. I wasn’t frightened. Just too exhausted for a boiling confrontation. So, I kept quiet. Watched him pace. Waited for the cool down.

He righted the stool and settled on top of it. “Let me see your hand.”

I put my hand in his, palm up. Crimson gashes tattooed my skin, wrist to fingertips. I watched his eyes, asked the question that had been plaguing me. “Am I infected now?”

His head snapped up, face soft. “No, B-ay. Since you seem to be immune to the airborne virus, we only have to worry about getting bit now. That…mouth thing has to release a compound. That’s how men absorb the infection.” He squeezed my arm. “I may not know a lot about what’s going on, but on this I’m positive.”

“How do you know? I could be carrying it now and not know. What are the symptoms?”

His flinch mirrored my inward cringe. I wanted to withdraw the question. Instead, we sat in silence, reliving our worst memories. The fever. The thinning skin, turning gray then green. Bloody vomit soaking butterfly-printed sheets. Contorted faces. Pupils receding until they weren’t there at all. Tiny hands hardening, elongating. “You’re right. I’m not infected.” I forced my eyes to his. “There’s not much left of the aphid. I checked from the deck a few times before the sun went down.”

He prodded my hand. “Maybe there’s something to that water theory, huh?” He laid my hand on the counter and fetched the medical kit.

“There’s something else,” I said. “This will sound naive, but I wasn’t afraid of it. I tapped into…I don’t know what to call it, instincts maybe, that I didn’t know I had. I mean, I was worried at first. Then I remembered my self-defense training and figured out how to beat it.”

“It’s called adrenaline. Grandmas use that shit to lift cars and save little kids.” He returned with antiseptic and bandages. “Doesn’t matter. Next time, you’ll be armed. No more close encounters.”

“Yeah…okay.” Except that close encounter made me feel alive for the first time in two months.

Although Joel’s uneventful day paled in comparison, his productivity lifted our morale. He collected most of the items on our supply list, acquiring the majority from empty homes. All of the gas stations were dry, but he siphoned more gas than we needed from abandoned cars.

“Most of the neighboring cities dropped off the power grid,” he said. “Grain Valley will follow soon.” Water had shut off two days earlier.

He stood and rummaged through one of the pouches. “I only ran into two men today. And I saw at least half a dozen aphids. I wasn’t able to pry anything substantial from the men. They were pretty skittish. Neither had been out of their homes in a while.”

Two weeks had passed since I crawled out of my depression. The last broadcast television station went off the air a week earlier. We longed for communication, news, any information that could give us hope.

He glanced up at me then went back to his bag. “I don’t think there are many people left. If there are, they’ve moved on.”

Made sense. I remembered a statistic on the problem the Social Security Administration faced concerning the country’s population. A smile crept up. There was a problem solved overnight. “The SSA reported something like sixty percent of the U.S. was between ages eighteen and sixty-four. Would that be comparable to the age group that survived this thing?”

He nodded, interest glinting his eyes. “Cut that in half to eliminate women and we’re down to thirty percent.”

“But a lot of men in that age group died, with all the mutant attacks, crime, accidents, other illnesses. At best, I’d say only fifteen percent of the human race is alive today.” It was probably closer to ten percent. And without the ability to reproduce, that number would dwindle.

He stood, hands behind his back. “You’re such a nerd.”

Well, I was a numbers junkie by profession and currently on disability leave from my big bank job. My employer had called it mental stress. I lost my kids. Mental stress seemed an inaccurate description. Didn’t matter. All world markets crashed a week later.

He curled up the corner of his mouth. “I have a surprise for you.”

My eyebrows rose.

He dangled a clear bag in front of me. It unrolled and three joints settled to the bottom. “Wanna fly Mexican airlines?”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and whispered against his mouth, “Mr. Delina. You shouldn’t have.”

“Mmm…I figured we both could use a little escape.”

He pulled me against him. Kissed along my jaw. Paused at my ear and wet his lips. His voice rumbled from deep within his chest. “Here’s how this is going to go down. We’re going to light up the ganja in the sun room. Then you’re going to ride me before we hit the second spliff. And when we are good and ripped, I’m going to bend you over the side of the bed and take you from behind until you scream for me.”

Just like him to tell me how it was going to be. He knew what that did to me. A forgotten sensation resurrected in my womb. I squeezed my thighs together and grabbed a six pack of beer from the counter. “Why are we still talking?”

In the sun room, we reclined on the couch. He exhaled and passed the bud.

I twisted the joint back and forth between my finger and thumb. “Where’d you get this, anyway?”

“You know that punk kid who always parked his beater on the street at the bottom of the hill?” He tilted his head toward the street. “Beater’s glove box.”

He brushed a stray hair from my face. “It’s a damn fine thing to see some of your vices back.”

I squashed the roach in the ashtray and wrinkled my nose at him. “Are we talking about the nicotine addiction or the sex addiction?”

“You know damn well it was the pack-a-day I didn’t like.”

I straddled his waist and planted my hands on the back of the couch on either side of his head.

His mouth caught mine and his arousal nudged my belly. “I’m sorry I yelled at you today.”

I ran my thumb across his lips. “I know.”

“You used to stand up for yourself when I lost my temper like that.”

I shrugged. “I know.” I didn’t blame him for losing it. He carried enough guilt leaving me alone, each time outlining do’s and don’ts. I disobeyed him and I paid for it.

His fingers pressed into my waist. His hips ground against mine. “I guess I’ll sleep better when all your vices are back. Though, I think I can wait for your temper to return.”

“Then let’s just focus on one nasty habit at a time, shall we?” I twisted his nipples. His back arched.

He ripped off my nightshirt and followed through on his promises. I screamed for him several times and rediscovered the part of me I’d buried. Did it mean I was moving forward? Had I finally conquered myself, my grief? Where were the tears? Maybe they’d never come.

After, we held each other and lapped up the afterglow of sex, smoke and tender memories of the very good life we once shared. We kept our conversations light, aware of the pressing decisions we faced and danger that awaited us outside.

And neither of us gave voice to the question that hovered between us, the one that screamed to be answered. Why had I survived?

April is the cruellest month.

T. S. Eliot

Scissors in hand, I stared at my reflection over the vanity, at the long hair Joel favored. I sectioned out a chunk and whacked off ten inches. The tresses hit the floor. No retreat. Much like the devastation of humanity.

Looking back, we should’ve seen it coming. Escalating religious unrest. Ethnic conflict. Political struggle. We should’ve known. It was happening globally in every city, every country.

I brushed out the next section. Chopped another ten inches.

A growing bravado from Muslim extremists had intensified the wars with…well, anyone who wasn’t Muslim. The U.S. spent years attacking the source. But when the war arrived on U.S. soil on April first, everything changed. I tried to put up a wall around my remembrance of the day the virus hit. An ugly ball of grief swelled in my throat and my memories pierced through.

I sat in the boardroom at work. Grain Valley Elementary flashed on my cell phone. The school’s nurse. Annie and Aaron had high fevers. I called Joel and left to pick up the kids.

Annie and Aaron died ten hours later.

I yanked the comb through a tangled knot. Gave up. Cut an angle to frame my face. The next section dropped in my eyes.

Those final ten hours replayed in my head every day since. Tucked together in Annie’s bed, my A’s held on to each other through bouts of fevers and chills. Joel and I held on to them. We sang their favorite songs with them. When their voices ebbed, we read to them. They dozed in and out of consciousness and I told them, “When you feel better, we’ll go to the park. We’ll slide down that big slide you love.”

Two little heads bobbed in agreement.

“We’ll go to the zoo. You know we just got a new polar bear? We’ll go visit him.”

That earned me pallid smiles. I kissed them all over their tiny faces and hands. “Mommy loves you so much.”

When Aaron exhaled his final breath, Annie touched his cheek. “Mama? Where did my brother go?”

I shook my head. The weight of the house pressed down the ceiling and crushed my chest. The walls closed in. Squeezed my shoulders. Cut my breaths.

“Don’t worry, Mama. I’ll find him.” The curve of Annie’s mouth slacked. The rise and fall of her torso slowed. Stopped.

I extended the scissors open. The sharp end sliced my wrist. Blood dripped down my arm and pooled in the bend at my elbow. I hadn’t shed a single tear in my grief. Joel always teased that I was born without tear ducts. Even through my children’s deaths, even while in the deep well of despair I’d receded into, my eyes remained dry.

We never impressed a religious opinion on our A’s. They asked numerous questions about creation and death, to which we would shrug our shoulders and ask them what they thought. In our worst nightmare, we weren’t prepared for our dying daughter’s inquiry.

Where did my brother go?

I stabbed the scissors’ edge deeper into my wrist. Would bleeding be a proxy to crying? The tip felt cold and unforgiving against my skin. I pressed harder. Crimson welled. I waited to bleed out, to feel peace as my life soaked into the carpet.

“It’s shorter than mine now.”

I jumped. Joel leaned around the door frame. I followed his gaze to my wrist. The scissors hovered over the unblemished skin. I blinked, shook off the fantasy and set the scissors down.

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “I attempted the shag style teen boys were wearing. Think I can pass as one?”

He stared at my chest. A smirk plastered his face.

I flattened my palms on my breasts. “I can make these less noticeable. Otherwise, what do you think?”

He kissed me. “I think your body armor and weapons will help.”

I returned the kiss with a love that matched my hate for the world.

“Come on.” He led me to the den.

I nestled into one end of the couch. The room touted two stories of floor to ceiling windows and opened to the deck and sun room. The reflection from the pool water rippled along the khaki walls. Behind us, a staircase led to the open balcony of the top floor. The floor once occupied by a seven year old girl adept at painting flowers and a six year boy who proudly conquered
Lego Star Wars
on the Xbox. Having our bedroom on the main level made it a little easier to ignore the rooms upstairs.

He knelt over me, took my mouth with his and rescued my thoughts. I reveled in the feel of his weight on me.