Retry...
I hate end of the world stories. I think most of them are trite and overdone. Same thing with amnesia stories. But sometimes out of the blue something pops into your head and you have to run with it. It might even be another end of the world story. It might even be another amnesia story. But even a story that has been done a million times can be good if you have an angle that approaches it from a different direction than the norm.
One night a good while back, maybe as much as a year ago, an idea popped into my head. And since then I've tried to start it three different times in three different ways. I think one of them may even be buried somewhere in the journal here. I havent been entirely happy with any of them, but this one I think in some ways I like better than the others. the first two gave away everything right at the opening. this one teases the details into place. In some sense, you wont find out what happened until the first character introduced finds out.
So at some point last night I had a bit of inspiration and today when I got home I cranked out 4,500 words in a matter of a couple of hours. then I stopped, mostly because I needed a break and I needed to re-asses where the next chunk of story would go before I actually got there.
This is very long and not edited in any way. I essentially just cranked it out and stopped. There is even one space where I left myself notes because I needed to come back to it.
This is all transplanted from Word, so the tags were lost, and replaced haphazardly via the crappy "Rich text" mode. I didnt wanna, but it is faster than typing in the html.
So if you have a good chunk of time, feel free.
I shouldn’t be here. Something is wrong with my body.
The first thing is pain; a numb, dull pain slowly creeping across my body. It is that pain that makes me aware of the body itself.
Then there are needles. A thousand needles and pinpricks course across my skin. As if the nerves were firing wildly after coming to life from being frozen, trying to find their way, trying to configure how they should process and message my brain. In the confusion, they send needle pricks. On every millimeter of skin, in every joint and muscle, from the tip of my scalp, behind my eyes, beneath my tongue- every inch of me is tormented mercilessly by my body coming to uncertain life.
The torment makes me shudder, the shudder increases my pain, the pain causes me to convulse, then gasp. In the gasp, there is a moan that comes from my mouth.
It is not my voice.
Where am I? My eyes peel themselves open and are assaulted by harsh, abrasive light. The vision is blurred, the light blinding. I shut my eyes, not knowing what I have seen.
I hear a sound in the distance, a voice. I struggle to say something in reply, but I am afraid of the sounds that might pass my lips. I do not want to hear myself. I don’t want to hear that strangers’ voice passing my lips. Are they my lips?
I feel a numb pressure taking hold of my arm. There is a tapping on the flesh above the elbow, then I feel something I recognize: an actual needle this time, slipping into the vein of my arm. Within moments, the pain eases, the world dims, and I sink back into unconsciousness, happy to escape reality. One single, final thought comes into my brain just before I lapse into darkness:
What am I?
______________________
I shouldn’t be here. Something is wrong with my body.
“…have the resources to take care of strays.” A voice, stern and final. Female.
“…what you think. I’m not going to … die, just because…” Another voice. Just as stern, just as full of conviction. A male. I struggle to make out the words. They come fragmented and from a distance. There is an odd effect to them, as if they were bouncing off hard surfaces.
“… to talk to Miguel about this. We’ll see how long he… stupid fucking waste.” The female voice finishes abruptly and there is a pause. It’s as if each of them are waiting for something from the other.
“I…” I try to speak, but as soon as the voice passes my lips I find myself rasping in a coughing fit.
“He’s waking up.” I hear the male say. The female says nothing. I hear their footsteps come toward me. The sound makes me aware of something. I am above the floor. Elevated. On a bed? No. My body starts to respond to what it needs to piece together my situation. It is a hard, solid surface, I feel. Cold. Smooth. Like a metal table, perhaps. I am under a ragged, tattered sheet that rasps against my skin, but is at least warm- warmer than the air where my skin is exposed.
My self-discovery comes to a halt when the male speaks to me. “Can you hear me?” He asks.
I can only nod. I try to open my eyes, but the light is still glaring down at me. “Bright.” I manage to say, startled by the sound of my own alien voice. I hear the click of a light switch and open my eyes again. It is all fog and blur. I can make out the rough shape of a form standing over me. “Thanks.” My voice is weak, and still wrong somehow, but it is starting to come back to me at least.
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” the man says. “I don’t want you to speak any more than you have to, ok?” I nod. “That’s good, just nod or shake your head if you can, ok?” I nod again. “I’m not a doctor, we don’t have any doctors here. But we do have some medicine and we can figure out the dosages if we need to. If we have to. But we don’t have much, so we don’t want to use it if it isn’t absolutely necessary. Do you understand what I am saying?” I nod again.
I hear a sigh and he continues. “You seemed like you were in a lot of pain earlier so we gave you some morphine, but the effect should be starting to wear off if it isn’t worn off already. I need to know if you are in pain now. Are you in pain now?”
It isn’t a question I can easily answer so I try to speak. “Some. Not too bad. Just feel… wrong.”
“That’s ok. I’m going to ask you a few more questions, ok?” I nod. “Do you know what is wrong with you?” I shake my head. I have no idea. “Were you in a hospital before it happened?”
Before what happened, I wonder? “Don’t know.” I say. “Don’t think so.”
“Ask him why he was on the surface.” I heard the female interject. “Ask him how he got here and from where. Ask him how he knew where to find us. Are there others where he came from? What is he doing here?” Her questions grow more accusing in tone in succession.
“Easy, Matty.” The male responds. “One thing at a time, ok?”
But something in her tone, something in her suspicion strikes a nerve and me and I’m suddenly overwhelmed with some undefined certainty.
I lurch my body forward and almost upright, I shake my head to ward off the sudden flights of shooting stars that appear in my vision and try to send me unconscious. “No! She’s right… she’s- I shouldn’t be here! Something is wrong with my body!”
“Take it easy, take it easy,” the male urges, grabbing hold of my shoulders, trying to ease me back to a lying position.
“You don’t understand,” I plead helplessly. “I’m not ME!” But before I can even understand myself, the shooting stars at the corners of my vision intensify, form a white tunnel in my vision and quickly close in on my view, shutting me down before I can damage myself.
______________________
Home sweet home, the man named Thomas Moore thinks. He takes stock of his surroundings. He’s in a smallish conference room in a large underground concrete bunker built and stocked by a wealthy billionaire. The paranoid billionaire, in the early eighties, was so nervous of the threat of nuclear holocaust he nearly spent himself into bankruptcy building the largest, most secret underground lair he could afford. It was three levels deep, roughly 300 feet below the surface at it’s deepest, with (Hey Dumbass: FIGURE DIMENSIONS, ROOMS, HOW MUCH FOR STORAGE, HOW MUCH FOR LIVING AREAS, HOW MUCH FOR THE MECHANICS OF KEEPING IT IN POWER- and how, solar? Too obvious. Too visible. Generators? Fuel issues- storage, consumption, etc. Need something renewable, tidal power? Put Close to ‘private’ beach might work. Need to work on details of the place diagram would be helpful, rough architecture and map. Do it before you start contradicting youself.)
The most difficult part had to be keeping it secret. Any time you build something really big, there are a lot of loose ends to tie up. People talk. Thomas Moore doesn’t know how the old man kept the place so secret. He’s not entirely sure he wants to know. He does, however, find it ironic that he had read about the wealthy tycoon’s death just weeks before the apocalypse the codger had been preparing for actually came.
Not that the end of the world had anything to do with any nuclear exchanges. Not that the end of the world could have been prepared for in any way shape or form considering the shape it finally came in.
“Thomas.” Matty greets him coolly as she enters, her walk proud and confident. Too proud and confident, Thomas knew. An overcompensated guise she wore to hide her own insecurities.
“Matty.” He replies. He tries to make it sound at least sincere. He would like to not hate her as much as he does. He’d like to not dislike anyone. With so few people left, he knew he couldn’t afford to hold grudges. Especially not with women he has been intimate with. “How long before Miguel gets here?”
She doesn’t look at him, just shrugs. Miguel is a sore point, isn’t he? Thomas confirms to himself. She kisses Miguel’s ass, toadies to him. Has probably tried to sleep with him. She’s obviously not been as successful as she would like.
Miguel. Landscaper of the Stars turned savior of humanity. Thomas couldn’t help but smile inwardly. It was Miguel Rosas who had found the place. It was Miguel Rosas who went out every day and found people and brought them back to the relative safety of the huge underground shelter. It was Miguel Rosas, otherwise a quiet, timid man, who would step in unobtrusively and make the tough decisions when everyone else would bicker and squabble.
Nobody would call him the leader of the 115 souls who survived due in most part to his finding them and bringing them back, because he wouldn’t let them. But if something needed deciding, if something needed to be done, Rosas was the man you saw to make sure it happened. Because you listened to him when he spoke, because if you were there, you owed your life to him.
Thomas just couldn’t get over yet how young Rosas was. Twenty-five? He looked older, but Thomas could tell he was young. And how much responsibility did Rosas have on his shoulders? The whole world, as far as any of them knew. Rosas held the burden of the whole world and all of the 115 people in it. Sure, there were probably more people. There had to be, right? If this small group of people who had been on the outskirts of Los Angeles survived, surely others did, and probably in larger numbers. Especially in more rural areas, which didn’t seem to suffer as badly in the initial…
Thomas’ train of thought ended abruptly by the entrance of Miguel Rosas into the little conference room where Miguel arbitrated disputes.
A little blonde girl who never smiled or spoke trailed Miguel, as she always did. No one knew who she was, and Miguel wouldn’t say. All any of them knew was that the reason Miguel still went out onto the surface day after day, week after week was because he had made her a promise. He made her a promise to find her parents. He had to know they were dead. He had to know. But he went out anyway. And in his search, he had found others. But he hadn’t found any more people after the first few weeks- not in months. Not until he had found the strange body of the strange man who now lie unconscious several levels below them.
Miguel came in, nodded to Thomas and Matty both and grabbed one of the dozen chairs leaning against the concrete wall, unfolded it and pulled it over to the table. The little girl, holding an armless Barbie-doll absently by the hair, slid under the table without so much looking at anyone else.
“I just got back from the surface,” Miguel said, his slightly Hispanic accent weighed by weariness. “If we could make this quick, I would be grateful.”
_________________
He woke to darkness and pain and a screeching ringing in his ears. Moments passed before he realized he was alive. Alive. Movement stirred against him. The girl… Beneath the resounding white noise piercing his ability to hear he could make out the soft sound of her sobs.
Cold around and on top of him, like a coffin of cast iron. Not a coffin then, coffins are made of wood. He shook his head, trying to shake the glue congealing in his mind, cloying his thoughts. What the hell am I in, he wondered.
Tub. I’m in a tub. He struggled to remember why he was in a tub. His thoughts puzzled themselves into coherence. Tornadoes. You get in a tub during a tornado. But there was no tornado. Why did I get in the tub? The girl pressed against him. Why am I in a tub, fully dressed, in all kinds of pain, with the daughter of a famous…
His memories came together with a sudden jolt:
“Miguel. Hey, the place looks good man, great job.” The man speaking to him was famous. An Actor, the kind of guy you see on the cover of tabloids. He had an easy, confident smile and it was impossible not to like him when you met him face to face. He was probably in his forties, though he could, and still often did, pass for someone in their earlier thirties.
Miguel, on the other hand, was nobody. He made his living mowing lawns and pruning shrubbery. His face was rather rough, Hispanic, and though he was only in his late-twenties, he could possibly have passed for someone approaching forty. He smiled shyly and nodded. “Thank you Mr. Stone.”
The actors’ face scrunched up in amusement and he replied jovially, “Come on. Call me Brett. Mr. Stone was my father. Actually, Mr. Stone wasn’t even my father, Mr. Rychostolowski was. But my agent says 20 years ago, no one is going to hire someone with a name they can’t pronounce, and he wasn’t lying. Fuck that, I says, all indignant and proud. That’s my name. Five years go by and I’m living with three roommates in a one-bedroom apartment, starving my skinny ass off hoping to get a part pouring coffee in a fucking commercial about those... what’s that crap with the commercials where the two chicks are sitting at a table remembering that little café in Paris where they ogled the waiter’s ass? That one.” He took a breath and smiled in mirth at the memory. “So I went to my agent and said, ‘I need to fucking eat.’ And since then, I’ve been Brett fucking Stone, hounded by paparazzi day and night, and married to the most outrageously beautiful, incredibly smart and unbelievably talented female actor in the world.”
“Actress,” Miguel interjected.
Brett Stone looked dismayed, and then cast quick glances about. He put his arm around Miguel’s shoulder and spoke in a conspirational tone. “Man, you can’t call them actresses anymore. You gotta get with the proper feminist revolutionary spirit, Miguel. Cast down the shackles of the patriarchal society we live in and view all things with equality. They’re actors now. Tits or cocks, we’re all actors now. Or so my darling, yet sometimes frightening wife, tells me. I, for one, am not going to argue with her.” He winked at Miguel to confirm he didn’t take it too seriously and then laughed a big, resounding laugh. Miguel smiled and couldn’t help but giggle.
“Hey!” Brett Stone cried. “Come on in the house, grab a beer, we got that new place in Borneo with the big ass terrace last week, I’ve sketched out some ideas, tell me what you think.”
Miguel followed the actor into his massive home and they wound their way to what Miguel assumed was the living room. The room itself was almost as large as Miguel’s apartment, with a glass door leading out to the massive pool. The rest of the wall was lined with windows that equaled in size and shape the sliding glass doors so that the effect was an entire wall of glass, overlooking both the pool and the sprawling city of Los Angeles beneath them. Miguel turned at the sound of thumping, small feet and watched as a young four-year-old girl ran up to the famous actor and jumped into his arms.
“Daddy look what I drew!” She said proudly, shoving some rumpled papers into his face.
“Aww, baby, you drew all over daddy’s drawings. I was going to show Mr… I was going to show Miguel here what I wanted to do with the new place.”
“Rosas.” Said a third voice. Miguel turned to see another actress… actor… enter the room, Brett Stone’s equally famous wife, Agnes Little. Unlike her husbands’ open friendliness, Agnes’ fame came from her cool, guarded distance. She looked at Miguel briefly, nodded imperceptibly then returned her attention to her family.
“Honey Bunches of Oats!” Brett cried out upon seeing his wife. “Good to see you, babe!”
Agnes closed her eyes in a wince and parted her lips, as if going to make a stern reply, but in the end, she couldn’t help herself and her lips parted in a restrained smile. She opened her eyes and looked with amusement at her husband. “Babe, is it?”
“Sugar Pie, Apple Dumpling Gang, Sweet Ti…ahh, Sweet Bosom, Cherry Blossom, Buttercup, Brandy Wine… Pumpkin… Snoogy-Woogy, uh… uh… Honey Bunches of Oats…”
The little girl, laughing at the silly terms of endearment, smacked him on the chest, “You SAID that one already!”
“I did? Oh, I did!” Brett Stone looked back at his wife. “You know I love you, babe.” He winked.
“Augh.” Agnes threw her hands up in mock-disgust and, smiling, did an about face and left the room.
“Mommy?” It was a whisper, but it hit Miguel like a hammer in his heart. How to answer?
“It’s ok…” what was her name again? “We get out of here I will find her, ok?”
There was a pause as the girl seemed to consider it.
“I promise I’ll find them, okay? I promise.” What the hell was her name?
The girl said nothing, just sniffled.
“Hey… I’m catholic, you know? Do you know what that means, to be catholic?” she didn’t answer. “Well, it means I have to keep my promises. No matter what. It means if I say I will do something, if I make a promise, I have to do it. No matter what. Okay?”
“Okay.” The girl said at long last.
_ _ _ _
Miguel awoke with a start, feeling buried. He threw the covers off of himself and sat up. He was shaking. He always shook when he woke up. He was covered in a cold sweat. He was always covered in a cold sweat when he woke up. This is normal, he reminded himself again, you aren’t buried in the tub any more. Slowly, slowly he overcame his fears. It did not help that instead of being buried under hundreds of pounds of rubble in the confines of an iron tub that he was now living buried under tons and tons of concrete and earth in the confines of cold concrete gray walls, floors and ceilings.
He got up again to face the promise another day. The promise he had already kept. But the promise still held him anyway.
He knew where the girl’s parents were. He had buried what was left of their shattered bodies already. But he couldn’t tell her. He just couldn’t break her any more than she was already broken.
What the hell was her name? He asked himself, as he always did- every morning. He still didn’t know. He still couldn’t remember. He looked over to the little cot beside his where she slept. She hadn’t spoken any more since that last, hesitant ‘okay’ that always came back to haunt him in his dreams.
She was used to his morning fits by now. She slept through them. It had been difficult at first. She had insisted on always sleeping cuddled up with him, always coming with him when he went out and searched. It had taken a long time for her to get to the point where he could sleep by himself, where she would let him go out without her. Even still when she would wake, she would wait for him at the entrance to the shelter until he returned. Someone there would feed her, would watch her, and she would take the food and take the care without response, looking always to the exit, waiting for Miguel to return with her parents.
He didn’t mind having someone to hold at night, he didn’t mind comforting her, because it comforted him in turn. But the closer she was to him, the more he felt guilty every time he came back without her parents. The more he cared, the more it pierced his heart to see her eyes fall, sadly, every day he returned.
He dressed himself as quietly as he could and wished, as he did every morning, that they had water to spare for more frequent bathing. It saddened him to discover he was starting to get used to the putrid smells of people. The stink of over a hundred bodies of unwashed flesh seemed to be slightly, slightly less noticeable every day. Not enough that he was readily aware of the difference, really, but one day he woke up and realized he hadn’t complained to himself about it lately.
He finished tying his boots and took a parting look at the girl. He took a deep breath as he watched her little fist tighten around her Barbie doll while she slept.
First order of business, check on the guest.
They had been lucky that most of the people they had found were mostly healthy. There had been broken bones and even one extremely bad case where an amputation was necessary. It had not gone well. None of them knew enough about doctoring to really know what they were doing. The shelter was stocked with all sorts of medical equipment and even books that were essentially ‘doctoring for dummies’ books. The man who had planned to use this place tried to prepare for every eventuality. He just hadn’t planned on over a hundred people shacking up here in his absence. By the looks of the place and the number of beds, it was built for perhaps 40 people, tops.
Miguel wondered who the other 39 were supposed to be. It was probably meant at least to have one actual doctor, and possibly other support staff, he guessed. The old man would probably need someone to maintain the place; keep it running. Close family? Did the old guy have close family? He didn’t know.
The amputation had gone badly. They just didn’t know what they were doing. They used a lot of precious pain medication and in the end, in futility. Angela. Angela was the name of the young woman who had died. God, that poor girl. What was she? 16? 17? It was excruciating watching her in so much pain. Matty and Thomas had first argued then. As they did often. When the girl was beyond hope Matty argued she should be ‘let go.’ As in helped to die. Thomas refused. He refused to do anything to harm a patient. And Miguel? How could a child of God ‘help’ someone die? He could not. He often wondered though if perhaps he should have. He wished they had not asked him.
Thomas had a good feel for doctoring. Miguel knew that and knew that he was lucky to have Thomas there. People respected Thomas, and Thomas always did the best he could for everyone. If nothing else, he sincerely cared for people. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t ‘let them go’ when he should have. Perhaps that is why he fought for them long after fighting became useless. It may have been a trait that was a fault, but Miguel respected it.
If people couldn’t keep fighting long after fighting was hopeless, how would any of them survive?
And Matty? The woman was ruthless. Miguel knew that she had some history with Thomas. He didn’t know what, he could only tell that it didn’t end well between them. The problem was, her ruthlessness and harsh practicality made a lot of sense a lot of times. The truth was, they didn’t have the supplies to spare on hopeless cases. The truth was, she was more often right than wrong. Her logic and cool view of a situation was efficient and deadly to the point.
He didn’t like her, but he didn’t think the feeling was mutual. For some reason she looked at Miguel almost in reverence. He was one of the few people she would actually listen to when they had an opposing viewpoint. She seemed to revere him. He caught the looks, the obvious and sometimes alluring glances, and he simply tried to ignore them.
“Miguel! Glad I caught you!” A heavyset man called out to him from down a long concrete corridor. As heavy as he may be, Miguel thought, the guy had the strength of a bull. Miguel couldn’t help but smile. The man came running up to him. “Hows it going?”
Miguel replied, “Oh, you know how it is. End of the world, my back is killing me and I haven’t gotten laid in ages. But I shouldn’t complain.”
The guy, whose name was Robert, smiled broadly. “Bastard. That’s my joke.” He punched Miguel playfully in the shoulder. Miguel just shrugged, smiling. “Heading out this morning? Was wondering if you could keep an eye out for a few things.”
Miguel nodded. “I think Betty and Soups are going out as well, might want to talk to them too.”
“Meh,” Robert said dismissively. “Nobody finds the goods like Mr. Rosas.”
“What do you need?” Miguel asked. Robert went through a brief list of goods. It was his standard list, filled with a few urgently needed items, a few high demand items and even a few things that were downright impractical. Miguel nodded as each item was spoken to him, hoping he could remember half of it. He would at least try to remember the stuff that was needed most.
“So when you heading out?” Robert asked Miguel.
“Soon.” Miguel replied. I want to go see the new guy first, see how he is doing.”
“Ah. Going to visit the ghost, huh? Keep an eye out for Mishka, I think she’s already staking her claim.”
One night a good while back, maybe as much as a year ago, an idea popped into my head. And since then I've tried to start it three different times in three different ways. I think one of them may even be buried somewhere in the journal here. I havent been entirely happy with any of them, but this one I think in some ways I like better than the others. the first two gave away everything right at the opening. this one teases the details into place. In some sense, you wont find out what happened until the first character introduced finds out.
So at some point last night I had a bit of inspiration and today when I got home I cranked out 4,500 words in a matter of a couple of hours. then I stopped, mostly because I needed a break and I needed to re-asses where the next chunk of story would go before I actually got there.
This is very long and not edited in any way. I essentially just cranked it out and stopped. There is even one space where I left myself notes because I needed to come back to it.
This is all transplanted from Word, so the tags were lost, and replaced haphazardly via the crappy "Rich text" mode. I didnt wanna, but it is faster than typing in the html.
So if you have a good chunk of time, feel free.
I shouldn’t be here. Something is wrong with my body.
The first thing is pain; a numb, dull pain slowly creeping across my body. It is that pain that makes me aware of the body itself.
Then there are needles. A thousand needles and pinpricks course across my skin. As if the nerves were firing wildly after coming to life from being frozen, trying to find their way, trying to configure how they should process and message my brain. In the confusion, they send needle pricks. On every millimeter of skin, in every joint and muscle, from the tip of my scalp, behind my eyes, beneath my tongue- every inch of me is tormented mercilessly by my body coming to uncertain life.
The torment makes me shudder, the shudder increases my pain, the pain causes me to convulse, then gasp. In the gasp, there is a moan that comes from my mouth.
It is not my voice.
Where am I? My eyes peel themselves open and are assaulted by harsh, abrasive light. The vision is blurred, the light blinding. I shut my eyes, not knowing what I have seen.
I hear a sound in the distance, a voice. I struggle to say something in reply, but I am afraid of the sounds that might pass my lips. I do not want to hear myself. I don’t want to hear that strangers’ voice passing my lips. Are they my lips?
I feel a numb pressure taking hold of my arm. There is a tapping on the flesh above the elbow, then I feel something I recognize: an actual needle this time, slipping into the vein of my arm. Within moments, the pain eases, the world dims, and I sink back into unconsciousness, happy to escape reality. One single, final thought comes into my brain just before I lapse into darkness:
What am I?
______________________
I shouldn’t be here. Something is wrong with my body.
“…have the resources to take care of strays.” A voice, stern and final. Female.
“…what you think. I’m not going to … die, just because…” Another voice. Just as stern, just as full of conviction. A male. I struggle to make out the words. They come fragmented and from a distance. There is an odd effect to them, as if they were bouncing off hard surfaces.
“… to talk to Miguel about this. We’ll see how long he… stupid fucking waste.” The female voice finishes abruptly and there is a pause. It’s as if each of them are waiting for something from the other.
“I…” I try to speak, but as soon as the voice passes my lips I find myself rasping in a coughing fit.
“He’s waking up.” I hear the male say. The female says nothing. I hear their footsteps come toward me. The sound makes me aware of something. I am above the floor. Elevated. On a bed? No. My body starts to respond to what it needs to piece together my situation. It is a hard, solid surface, I feel. Cold. Smooth. Like a metal table, perhaps. I am under a ragged, tattered sheet that rasps against my skin, but is at least warm- warmer than the air where my skin is exposed.
My self-discovery comes to a halt when the male speaks to me. “Can you hear me?” He asks.
I can only nod. I try to open my eyes, but the light is still glaring down at me. “Bright.” I manage to say, startled by the sound of my own alien voice. I hear the click of a light switch and open my eyes again. It is all fog and blur. I can make out the rough shape of a form standing over me. “Thanks.” My voice is weak, and still wrong somehow, but it is starting to come back to me at least.
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” the man says. “I don’t want you to speak any more than you have to, ok?” I nod. “That’s good, just nod or shake your head if you can, ok?” I nod again. “I’m not a doctor, we don’t have any doctors here. But we do have some medicine and we can figure out the dosages if we need to. If we have to. But we don’t have much, so we don’t want to use it if it isn’t absolutely necessary. Do you understand what I am saying?” I nod again.
I hear a sigh and he continues. “You seemed like you were in a lot of pain earlier so we gave you some morphine, but the effect should be starting to wear off if it isn’t worn off already. I need to know if you are in pain now. Are you in pain now?”
It isn’t a question I can easily answer so I try to speak. “Some. Not too bad. Just feel… wrong.”
“That’s ok. I’m going to ask you a few more questions, ok?” I nod. “Do you know what is wrong with you?” I shake my head. I have no idea. “Were you in a hospital before it happened?”
Before what happened, I wonder? “Don’t know.” I say. “Don’t think so.”
“Ask him why he was on the surface.” I heard the female interject. “Ask him how he got here and from where. Ask him how he knew where to find us. Are there others where he came from? What is he doing here?” Her questions grow more accusing in tone in succession.
“Easy, Matty.” The male responds. “One thing at a time, ok?”
But something in her tone, something in her suspicion strikes a nerve and me and I’m suddenly overwhelmed with some undefined certainty.
I lurch my body forward and almost upright, I shake my head to ward off the sudden flights of shooting stars that appear in my vision and try to send me unconscious. “No! She’s right… she’s- I shouldn’t be here! Something is wrong with my body!”
“Take it easy, take it easy,” the male urges, grabbing hold of my shoulders, trying to ease me back to a lying position.
“You don’t understand,” I plead helplessly. “I’m not ME!” But before I can even understand myself, the shooting stars at the corners of my vision intensify, form a white tunnel in my vision and quickly close in on my view, shutting me down before I can damage myself.
______________________
Home sweet home, the man named Thomas Moore thinks. He takes stock of his surroundings. He’s in a smallish conference room in a large underground concrete bunker built and stocked by a wealthy billionaire. The paranoid billionaire, in the early eighties, was so nervous of the threat of nuclear holocaust he nearly spent himself into bankruptcy building the largest, most secret underground lair he could afford. It was three levels deep, roughly 300 feet below the surface at it’s deepest, with (Hey Dumbass: FIGURE DIMENSIONS, ROOMS, HOW MUCH FOR STORAGE, HOW MUCH FOR LIVING AREAS, HOW MUCH FOR THE MECHANICS OF KEEPING IT IN POWER- and how, solar? Too obvious. Too visible. Generators? Fuel issues- storage, consumption, etc. Need something renewable, tidal power? Put Close to ‘private’ beach might work. Need to work on details of the place diagram would be helpful, rough architecture and map. Do it before you start contradicting youself.)
The most difficult part had to be keeping it secret. Any time you build something really big, there are a lot of loose ends to tie up. People talk. Thomas Moore doesn’t know how the old man kept the place so secret. He’s not entirely sure he wants to know. He does, however, find it ironic that he had read about the wealthy tycoon’s death just weeks before the apocalypse the codger had been preparing for actually came.
Not that the end of the world had anything to do with any nuclear exchanges. Not that the end of the world could have been prepared for in any way shape or form considering the shape it finally came in.
“Thomas.” Matty greets him coolly as she enters, her walk proud and confident. Too proud and confident, Thomas knew. An overcompensated guise she wore to hide her own insecurities.
“Matty.” He replies. He tries to make it sound at least sincere. He would like to not hate her as much as he does. He’d like to not dislike anyone. With so few people left, he knew he couldn’t afford to hold grudges. Especially not with women he has been intimate with. “How long before Miguel gets here?”
She doesn’t look at him, just shrugs. Miguel is a sore point, isn’t he? Thomas confirms to himself. She kisses Miguel’s ass, toadies to him. Has probably tried to sleep with him. She’s obviously not been as successful as she would like.
Miguel. Landscaper of the Stars turned savior of humanity. Thomas couldn’t help but smile inwardly. It was Miguel Rosas who had found the place. It was Miguel Rosas who went out every day and found people and brought them back to the relative safety of the huge underground shelter. It was Miguel Rosas, otherwise a quiet, timid man, who would step in unobtrusively and make the tough decisions when everyone else would bicker and squabble.
Nobody would call him the leader of the 115 souls who survived due in most part to his finding them and bringing them back, because he wouldn’t let them. But if something needed deciding, if something needed to be done, Rosas was the man you saw to make sure it happened. Because you listened to him when he spoke, because if you were there, you owed your life to him.
Thomas just couldn’t get over yet how young Rosas was. Twenty-five? He looked older, but Thomas could tell he was young. And how much responsibility did Rosas have on his shoulders? The whole world, as far as any of them knew. Rosas held the burden of the whole world and all of the 115 people in it. Sure, there were probably more people. There had to be, right? If this small group of people who had been on the outskirts of Los Angeles survived, surely others did, and probably in larger numbers. Especially in more rural areas, which didn’t seem to suffer as badly in the initial…
Thomas’ train of thought ended abruptly by the entrance of Miguel Rosas into the little conference room where Miguel arbitrated disputes.
A little blonde girl who never smiled or spoke trailed Miguel, as she always did. No one knew who she was, and Miguel wouldn’t say. All any of them knew was that the reason Miguel still went out onto the surface day after day, week after week was because he had made her a promise. He made her a promise to find her parents. He had to know they were dead. He had to know. But he went out anyway. And in his search, he had found others. But he hadn’t found any more people after the first few weeks- not in months. Not until he had found the strange body of the strange man who now lie unconscious several levels below them.
Miguel came in, nodded to Thomas and Matty both and grabbed one of the dozen chairs leaning against the concrete wall, unfolded it and pulled it over to the table. The little girl, holding an armless Barbie-doll absently by the hair, slid under the table without so much looking at anyone else.
“I just got back from the surface,” Miguel said, his slightly Hispanic accent weighed by weariness. “If we could make this quick, I would be grateful.”
_________________
He woke to darkness and pain and a screeching ringing in his ears. Moments passed before he realized he was alive. Alive. Movement stirred against him. The girl… Beneath the resounding white noise piercing his ability to hear he could make out the soft sound of her sobs.
Cold around and on top of him, like a coffin of cast iron. Not a coffin then, coffins are made of wood. He shook his head, trying to shake the glue congealing in his mind, cloying his thoughts. What the hell am I in, he wondered.
Tub. I’m in a tub. He struggled to remember why he was in a tub. His thoughts puzzled themselves into coherence. Tornadoes. You get in a tub during a tornado. But there was no tornado. Why did I get in the tub? The girl pressed against him. Why am I in a tub, fully dressed, in all kinds of pain, with the daughter of a famous…
His memories came together with a sudden jolt:
“Miguel. Hey, the place looks good man, great job.” The man speaking to him was famous. An Actor, the kind of guy you see on the cover of tabloids. He had an easy, confident smile and it was impossible not to like him when you met him face to face. He was probably in his forties, though he could, and still often did, pass for someone in their earlier thirties.
Miguel, on the other hand, was nobody. He made his living mowing lawns and pruning shrubbery. His face was rather rough, Hispanic, and though he was only in his late-twenties, he could possibly have passed for someone approaching forty. He smiled shyly and nodded. “Thank you Mr. Stone.”
The actors’ face scrunched up in amusement and he replied jovially, “Come on. Call me Brett. Mr. Stone was my father. Actually, Mr. Stone wasn’t even my father, Mr. Rychostolowski was. But my agent says 20 years ago, no one is going to hire someone with a name they can’t pronounce, and he wasn’t lying. Fuck that, I says, all indignant and proud. That’s my name. Five years go by and I’m living with three roommates in a one-bedroom apartment, starving my skinny ass off hoping to get a part pouring coffee in a fucking commercial about those... what’s that crap with the commercials where the two chicks are sitting at a table remembering that little café in Paris where they ogled the waiter’s ass? That one.” He took a breath and smiled in mirth at the memory. “So I went to my agent and said, ‘I need to fucking eat.’ And since then, I’ve been Brett fucking Stone, hounded by paparazzi day and night, and married to the most outrageously beautiful, incredibly smart and unbelievably talented female actor in the world.”
“Actress,” Miguel interjected.
Brett Stone looked dismayed, and then cast quick glances about. He put his arm around Miguel’s shoulder and spoke in a conspirational tone. “Man, you can’t call them actresses anymore. You gotta get with the proper feminist revolutionary spirit, Miguel. Cast down the shackles of the patriarchal society we live in and view all things with equality. They’re actors now. Tits or cocks, we’re all actors now. Or so my darling, yet sometimes frightening wife, tells me. I, for one, am not going to argue with her.” He winked at Miguel to confirm he didn’t take it too seriously and then laughed a big, resounding laugh. Miguel smiled and couldn’t help but giggle.
“Hey!” Brett Stone cried. “Come on in the house, grab a beer, we got that new place in Borneo with the big ass terrace last week, I’ve sketched out some ideas, tell me what you think.”
Miguel followed the actor into his massive home and they wound their way to what Miguel assumed was the living room. The room itself was almost as large as Miguel’s apartment, with a glass door leading out to the massive pool. The rest of the wall was lined with windows that equaled in size and shape the sliding glass doors so that the effect was an entire wall of glass, overlooking both the pool and the sprawling city of Los Angeles beneath them. Miguel turned at the sound of thumping, small feet and watched as a young four-year-old girl ran up to the famous actor and jumped into his arms.
“Daddy look what I drew!” She said proudly, shoving some rumpled papers into his face.
“Aww, baby, you drew all over daddy’s drawings. I was going to show Mr… I was going to show Miguel here what I wanted to do with the new place.”
“Rosas.” Said a third voice. Miguel turned to see another actress… actor… enter the room, Brett Stone’s equally famous wife, Agnes Little. Unlike her husbands’ open friendliness, Agnes’ fame came from her cool, guarded distance. She looked at Miguel briefly, nodded imperceptibly then returned her attention to her family.
“Honey Bunches of Oats!” Brett cried out upon seeing his wife. “Good to see you, babe!”
Agnes closed her eyes in a wince and parted her lips, as if going to make a stern reply, but in the end, she couldn’t help herself and her lips parted in a restrained smile. She opened her eyes and looked with amusement at her husband. “Babe, is it?”
“Sugar Pie, Apple Dumpling Gang, Sweet Ti…ahh, Sweet Bosom, Cherry Blossom, Buttercup, Brandy Wine… Pumpkin… Snoogy-Woogy, uh… uh… Honey Bunches of Oats…”
The little girl, laughing at the silly terms of endearment, smacked him on the chest, “You SAID that one already!”
“I did? Oh, I did!” Brett Stone looked back at his wife. “You know I love you, babe.” He winked.
“Augh.” Agnes threw her hands up in mock-disgust and, smiling, did an about face and left the room.
“Mommy?” It was a whisper, but it hit Miguel like a hammer in his heart. How to answer?
“It’s ok…” what was her name again? “We get out of here I will find her, ok?”
There was a pause as the girl seemed to consider it.
“I promise I’ll find them, okay? I promise.” What the hell was her name?
The girl said nothing, just sniffled.
“Hey… I’m catholic, you know? Do you know what that means, to be catholic?” she didn’t answer. “Well, it means I have to keep my promises. No matter what. It means if I say I will do something, if I make a promise, I have to do it. No matter what. Okay?”
“Okay.” The girl said at long last.
_ _ _ _
Miguel awoke with a start, feeling buried. He threw the covers off of himself and sat up. He was shaking. He always shook when he woke up. He was covered in a cold sweat. He was always covered in a cold sweat when he woke up. This is normal, he reminded himself again, you aren’t buried in the tub any more. Slowly, slowly he overcame his fears. It did not help that instead of being buried under hundreds of pounds of rubble in the confines of an iron tub that he was now living buried under tons and tons of concrete and earth in the confines of cold concrete gray walls, floors and ceilings.
He got up again to face the promise another day. The promise he had already kept. But the promise still held him anyway.
He knew where the girl’s parents were. He had buried what was left of their shattered bodies already. But he couldn’t tell her. He just couldn’t break her any more than she was already broken.
What the hell was her name? He asked himself, as he always did- every morning. He still didn’t know. He still couldn’t remember. He looked over to the little cot beside his where she slept. She hadn’t spoken any more since that last, hesitant ‘okay’ that always came back to haunt him in his dreams.
She was used to his morning fits by now. She slept through them. It had been difficult at first. She had insisted on always sleeping cuddled up with him, always coming with him when he went out and searched. It had taken a long time for her to get to the point where he could sleep by himself, where she would let him go out without her. Even still when she would wake, she would wait for him at the entrance to the shelter until he returned. Someone there would feed her, would watch her, and she would take the food and take the care without response, looking always to the exit, waiting for Miguel to return with her parents.
He didn’t mind having someone to hold at night, he didn’t mind comforting her, because it comforted him in turn. But the closer she was to him, the more he felt guilty every time he came back without her parents. The more he cared, the more it pierced his heart to see her eyes fall, sadly, every day he returned.
He dressed himself as quietly as he could and wished, as he did every morning, that they had water to spare for more frequent bathing. It saddened him to discover he was starting to get used to the putrid smells of people. The stink of over a hundred bodies of unwashed flesh seemed to be slightly, slightly less noticeable every day. Not enough that he was readily aware of the difference, really, but one day he woke up and realized he hadn’t complained to himself about it lately.
He finished tying his boots and took a parting look at the girl. He took a deep breath as he watched her little fist tighten around her Barbie doll while she slept.
First order of business, check on the guest.
They had been lucky that most of the people they had found were mostly healthy. There had been broken bones and even one extremely bad case where an amputation was necessary. It had not gone well. None of them knew enough about doctoring to really know what they were doing. The shelter was stocked with all sorts of medical equipment and even books that were essentially ‘doctoring for dummies’ books. The man who had planned to use this place tried to prepare for every eventuality. He just hadn’t planned on over a hundred people shacking up here in his absence. By the looks of the place and the number of beds, it was built for perhaps 40 people, tops.
Miguel wondered who the other 39 were supposed to be. It was probably meant at least to have one actual doctor, and possibly other support staff, he guessed. The old man would probably need someone to maintain the place; keep it running. Close family? Did the old guy have close family? He didn’t know.
The amputation had gone badly. They just didn’t know what they were doing. They used a lot of precious pain medication and in the end, in futility. Angela. Angela was the name of the young woman who had died. God, that poor girl. What was she? 16? 17? It was excruciating watching her in so much pain. Matty and Thomas had first argued then. As they did often. When the girl was beyond hope Matty argued she should be ‘let go.’ As in helped to die. Thomas refused. He refused to do anything to harm a patient. And Miguel? How could a child of God ‘help’ someone die? He could not. He often wondered though if perhaps he should have. He wished they had not asked him.
Thomas had a good feel for doctoring. Miguel knew that and knew that he was lucky to have Thomas there. People respected Thomas, and Thomas always did the best he could for everyone. If nothing else, he sincerely cared for people. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t ‘let them go’ when he should have. Perhaps that is why he fought for them long after fighting became useless. It may have been a trait that was a fault, but Miguel respected it.
If people couldn’t keep fighting long after fighting was hopeless, how would any of them survive?
And Matty? The woman was ruthless. Miguel knew that she had some history with Thomas. He didn’t know what, he could only tell that it didn’t end well between them. The problem was, her ruthlessness and harsh practicality made a lot of sense a lot of times. The truth was, they didn’t have the supplies to spare on hopeless cases. The truth was, she was more often right than wrong. Her logic and cool view of a situation was efficient and deadly to the point.
He didn’t like her, but he didn’t think the feeling was mutual. For some reason she looked at Miguel almost in reverence. He was one of the few people she would actually listen to when they had an opposing viewpoint. She seemed to revere him. He caught the looks, the obvious and sometimes alluring glances, and he simply tried to ignore them.
“Miguel! Glad I caught you!” A heavyset man called out to him from down a long concrete corridor. As heavy as he may be, Miguel thought, the guy had the strength of a bull. Miguel couldn’t help but smile. The man came running up to him. “Hows it going?”
Miguel replied, “Oh, you know how it is. End of the world, my back is killing me and I haven’t gotten laid in ages. But I shouldn’t complain.”
The guy, whose name was Robert, smiled broadly. “Bastard. That’s my joke.” He punched Miguel playfully in the shoulder. Miguel just shrugged, smiling. “Heading out this morning? Was wondering if you could keep an eye out for a few things.”
Miguel nodded. “I think Betty and Soups are going out as well, might want to talk to them too.”
“Meh,” Robert said dismissively. “Nobody finds the goods like Mr. Rosas.”
“What do you need?” Miguel asked. Robert went through a brief list of goods. It was his standard list, filled with a few urgently needed items, a few high demand items and even a few things that were downright impractical. Miguel nodded as each item was spoken to him, hoping he could remember half of it. He would at least try to remember the stuff that was needed most.
“So when you heading out?” Robert asked Miguel.
“Soon.” Miguel replied. I want to go see the new guy first, see how he is doing.”
“Ah. Going to visit the ghost, huh? Keep an eye out for Mishka, I think she’s already staking her claim.”