The Beginning at the End of the World: A Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian Series (The Survivor Diaries Book 2) (12 page)

“Can I get you something?” asked Fitzpatrick. “You must be hungry. I’ll be right back.” He left the room without us even replying to his question.

“If you knew that we could come down with the Sneaker Wave, why didn’t you inoculate us in the beginning?” Mark asked.

Jackson leaned on the front of the desk and crossed his arms again. “We were given dozens of drugs over the course of our military careers. And don’t forget, so were you. We had no way of knowing which we would be up against,” he said.

“I know what this must seem like, but we are not your enemy. We are survivors, too,” said Owens.

“Bullshit, you are the military. Look at what you’re wearing. That’s a uniform, and that means one thing,
you
are U.S. Government Issue,” I argued.

“If you hadn’t noticed, Laura, there is no more U.S. Government,” stated Jackson coolly.

I stood and looked at the man I once thought I knew, close-up and directly in the eye. “I don’t believe a word you say anymore. It’s over. I AM NO ONE’S PUPPET!” I screamed in his face. “I want to go home, now.”

Owens stood up, as if to protect Jackson from me. What a joke.

“You went snooping on my property, and now you are going to stay and hear the truth,” Jackson barked.

I wanted to leave, to run and forget what I had seen. I wanted to erase all of this from my mind. I wanted to go back to my family, my friends, and my neighbors. This was not the future I wanted for my people. I wanted a Village where we could live without a clusterfuck. Being a farmer in Carmel Valley was now looking very preferential to me compared to what I feared I would find here.

The Villagers were still my people, even though they were falsely set up under my leadership. Right?

“And you, Colonel Jackson, are a liar. You brought my niece into your web of deceit. I hate you for that most of all,” I said. And then tears spurted out of my eyes with a will of their own.

I collapsed back into the chair that was close enough to Mark’s that I could hide my face from those men. They had no right to see my tears. I took a breath, wiped my face on Mark’s coat and turned back to the group who were sitting there looking like they had no idea of how to deal with a crying woman. I wished Mark didn’t have the same expression as the other men.

But my tears weren’t what they thought they were, a show of weakness. They were a way to let go of my anger and sadness before dealing with difficult situations. They were my strength. A type of strength these men could never know because it came from a place of vulnerability, something taboo in their culture.

∞

Fitzpatrick came in with a tray that held bowls of something that smelled divine. He handed Mark and I each a bowl of soup. Neither of us took a bite.

“You first,” I said, handing it to Jackson.

“You still think that we are trying to poison you? Are you kidding me? You know I would never hurt you, Laura,” he implored.

“I don’t know that,” I said. I could see the sting of my words on his face. What did he expect?

Jackson picked up the spoon and gobbled down several gulps. “Umm, this is good, Fitz. Extra bouillon cubes?”

“No, extra chicken this time,” answered Fitzpatrick.

Chicken, did he say chicken? My mouth was watering at the smells of our offering. This wasn’t canned or dehydrated. Jackson handed back the bowl, and I could see what looked like fresh vegetables. How?

I was starved, and began to eat as everyone looked on. “What?” I asked.

“Let’s get on with this,” said Mark, placing his bowl on the desk. I was sure that he would refuse anything these men offered. I wished I had his will power.

“Before the war, Fitzpatrick, Owens and I worked at the base together,” Jackson began. “We were in Iraq together before that, and we have been friends for years.” He took a breath and slowly shook his head. He didn’t seem to know where to go from there, so Owens took over.

“Yes, we go way back. Over a year ago, things started to go down. There were rumors,” he said.

I put down my bowl and picked up my camera to make sure I was getting everything on the record.

“Do you have to do that?” asked Owens.

“Yes,” I said. “Go on.”

Owens squirmed uncomfortably in his chair uncomfortably, but I didn’t care. “Like I said, there were rumors, talk about moving our nuclear arms, putting them in place.”

“In place?” asked Mark.

They knew. They knew that there was going to be a catastrophic war that would end life as we knew it. And that’s why they built this place.

“Oh my God,” I said. Jackson must have seen the spark of recognition on my face. He nodded.

“We had a good idea of what was going to happen,” Jackson attempted to explain. “That’s why I moved into the house in the Village. It was strategic.”

“You knew, and you didn’t warn anyone?” I asked. All three men looked at me, guilty as charged. “Not even your families? You just let them die?”

No one said anything for one long minute. I could see the tension building in the air. I could certainly feel it; it was palpable, like someone had sucked the oxygen out of the room.

“You need to understand. If we told anyone, we would have been …” Jackson stopped, searching for the right word. “Extinguished. Immediately. It would have done no good.”

“The best we could have hoped for was to find a place, deflect the enemy and hope that we would survive the aftermath,” said Fitzpatrick.

I watched Jackson through my camera’s lens. I zoomed in on his face until I could see the pores of his skin. And there it was; his pores were excreting guilt in the form of beads of sweat. Who was this man?

“Put that fucking thing down,” Jackson ordered.

Mark stood, blocking my camera’s view. “Never speak to my wife like that again,” he said in Jackson’s face, fists pumped to strike. Owens and Fitzpatrick moved into the shot, placing themselves between Mark and Jackson. I kept filming, even though it was about to start a brawl. I didn’t care. The lens was my eye, and I knew that I would watch this scene over and over again. It was too much to take in in just one viewing. I needed to see everyone’s pores.

“Stop, all of you. Sit down and finish with what you have to say,” I ordered the angry men. I could actually smell the testosterone in room, and it stunk.

I stood too quickly and felt light headed. Everything went black. The next thing I knew I was in Mark’s arms, and he was taking me up an unfamiliar staircase. I started to wriggle, trying to free myself.

“Stop, please,” begged Mark. “We shouldn’t have come here. You were barely out of the hospital. What was I thinking?”

“Ahh, it was my decision to invade Jackson’s house. I am a big girl. I make my own decisions. So put me the fuck down,” I said.

Fitzpatrick was leading. He guided us into a bedroom. “Put her down on the bed.”

“Where’s my camera?” I asked.

“It’s in my pocket,” said Mark. “Jackson went to get the Doc. It will be awhile before they get here.”

“No, call him back. We can’t put the doctor in this position. It’s not fair.”

Owens came in the room behind us. “Malcolm has been here before.”

Another betrayal.
Does the whole Village know?

I just wanted to go home. I couldn’t deal with it. I lay on the bed and closed my eyes.

∞

I woke in a heavy sweat. Doc Malcolm was over me, listening to my chest through his stethoscope. I coughed heavily, and he sat up straight.

“I don’t know what Jackson was thinking bringing you all the way up here in the cold. You haven’t had enough time to recuperate. Now you have walking pneumonia. You have to rest to get your strength back.”

“You knew?” I asked.

He nodded.

I gave him a dirty look and turned in the opposite direction. I heard him leave the room and waited for Mark to come and help me make sense of all of this.

Unfortunately, the next voice I heard was Jackson’s. “Hey, I need to talk to you.”

There was a fireplace in the room, and I just lay there, staring into the flames. This would have been a gorgeous house. Just months ago, I would have given my eye teeth to live in it. Now, it was my prison.

“Go home, Jackson,” I told him.

“I can’t. The Doc just took the golf cart. Besides, it will be dark soon,” said Jackson.

I pushed myself up to turn around to look at him. “How are we supposed to get back now?”

“You aren’t. Malcolm said you need to stay in bed for a few more days,” Jackson told me. “He is going to tell your mother that you had a minor relapse, that you are in the hospital, and Mark is staying with you. That should hold off that family of yours, at least until morning.”

“And then?” Mark asked as he walked into the room.

“I was talking to Laura,
privately
,” Jackson said.

“You are doing nothing with my wife
, privately
,” Mark said, starting back into confrontational mode.

“Enough, enough, enough,” I screamed, causing a cough that made my lungs ache. I pulled the pillow over my head, but I could still hear everything.

“I am not going to sleep with your wife,” said Jackson. “At least not right now, heh, heh.”

My heart sank. How was I going to get this jealousy and fighting to stop?

I removed the pillow and sat straight up, ignoring the pain in my chest.

“This ends, now. First, Jackson, you are not funny. Next time you make a joke like that, I am letting him loose on your ass.

“Second, Mark, I am never going to sleep with Jackson. But, due to very unfortunate circumstances, he is in my life. We have more important things to deal with than this constant, idiotic fighting. I am married to the man I love, end of conversation.”

Jackson’s face openly showed pain.
Good.

He left the room.

∞

I had fallen back to sleep, and when I woke, it was dark, and Mark was next to me. He was on top of the blankets, snoring softly.

I left the room as quietly as possible. The upstairs hallway was softly lit by the light coming from a partially open door.

I crept down the hall and peeked through the slit in the door.

“Oh, hi,” said Owens. He was sitting at a desk in front of a laptop. “Please come in.”

“No, I just, umm. I… I need to use the facilities,” I told him.

“Of course. This way,” he said. He stood and showed me the way to another room in the hall. I followed him into a large, master bathroom, and he switched on the light.

I looked around and didn’t find what I was looking for. I looked at him, and he began to back out of the room. He wasn’t going to make this easy on me. “Where’s the… where’s the bucket?”

“Oh, no. The toilet works, and so does the bathtub. Malcolm said that you could take a bath. The steam will do you some good.”

My brain exploded; a bath, a real bath.

“I left some things on the counter for you, over there,” he said. “If you want, you can pass me your clothes out the door, and I will toss them in the washer,” he said.

It was as if the war never happened up here.

I did pass him my clothes through a small gap I made when I opened the door. I turned and looked at the room. After taking care of my “business,” I ran the water in the tub. I sat on the side and felt the water with my hand as it quickly turned warm, and then became hot.

I stood and examined my body in the full length mirror. My own body looked like a stranger to me. My once curvy figure was long gone. My frame looked completely different, as if my bones had arranged themselves to poke out of my skin. I could count each of my ribs.
How could Mark still be attracted to me?
I wondered.
And Jackson, how could he have said that he wasn’t going to sleep with me “at least right now?”

I checked out the items on the counter that had been left for me. There was a towel, soap, shampoo and conditioner, a khaki men’s t-shirt like Mark used to wear under his uniform, women’s deodorant and tampons. I didn’t happen to need them right then, but in the Village they were the equivalent to cigarettes in prison. Our supplies were almost gone, and most of us were using rags. The final gift I found was bubble bath.

I stepped into the warmth of the fragrant bubbles and water, and I was in heaven. How many times had I wished for this very thing since the war? We had all become accustomed to being a little filthy, smelly, with having dirt under our nails that we could not quite get to. I washed my hair three times, taking the shampoo-rinse-repeat thing literally.

I must have been in there for a long while, because Owens softly knocked on the door to see if I was alright.

I emerged a new person. Owens knocked and passed me a robe through the cracked door.

“I thought you might need this,” he said. “Do you think I could talk to you for a few minutes?” he asked reverently.

I must have been feeling more gratitude for the bath than I had realized because I agreed.