Flare (2 page)

By the seventh night I knew I had to leave the subways, and I knew I had to leave the city, for I had no place in either.

Zeke scratched his beard once more, and then pushed his fingers through his dreadlocked hair. He reminded himself that although no area was truly safe anymore, this closet wasn’t the city.

Right before he fell back asleep he recalled the screams he’d heard and realized that the anguish he’d felt in his nightmare was not one of fear, but of helplessness. In the subways, suffering had thrived all around him, and there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it.

/***/

He didn’t dream this time, and woke up in the middle of the day to the sounds of a fight upstairs. This wasn’t the fight of a subway mob, but the fight of a handful of people. Zeke listened to the sounds calmly because even with the nightmare, his sleep in the closet had been deep, deeper than any rest he’d had in the past weeks. He’d been sleep-deprived ever since the flare had come, with one eye on his next move and one eye on anyone who might threaten his safety. He felt good now, however, and was relaxed even though there was a fight happening nearby.

When you’re tired you only really feel the present.
You float through the world like a ghost, without a sense of the past or the ability to care for what’s to come. But I’m calm now. I know where I am, and there happens to be a problem upstairs. I’ll investigate, and help if I can.

Zeke had developed a technique for opening doors during the day, and he never wavered from it, not once. He gathered his bearings in the dark closet, feeling every nook and cranny until he knew exactly where he was at all times. He closed his eyes and looked away from the door, spun around twice and then tested himself to see if he could find the doorknob. He could, and practiced the move again, finding the doorknob immediately. He closed his eyes, wrapped a thick towel from one of the shelves around his face and then looked away from the door. He practiced his movement and then opened the closet, stuck his hand out, withdrew it and closed the closet door in one motion. He waited twenty seconds for the pain to register, but nothing came. He’d been hit with a few shafts of light before and it felt like touching a hot stove, a piercing blast that faded if you withdrew your hand quickly.

There was no pain, so Zeke took off the blindfold and opened the door a crack while facing the opposite wall. The wall lit up, but mildly so, and Zeke turned around slowly to see the room outside. He could hear the commotion upstairs more clearly now, but stayed patient and walked outside into the main room of the house, visually scanning for any loose boards that might come off. There were none, but the house was still well lit. A few shafts of light crept through the cracks around the window covers, but they weren’t strong enough to hurt Zeke and bounced off the ceiling to bathe the room in an eerie, diffused glow. Zeke was still wary of the cracks, but was glad to be able to see. He had stayed in perfectly sealed houses before, and it was always difficult to find your way around in complete darkness. Zeke guessed that the owner of this house allowed these cracks because they illuminated the house during the day, but whatever the case, Zeke was glad that he could see.

Zeke crept to the stairs and hid underneath them, ascertaining what was going on one floor above. It sounded like three people, all men, and there was some sort of a standoff. One of the men was pleading for something, but his words were muted by the house’s walls. Zeke’s first instinct was to return to the closet and hide, but the people upstairs were genuinely in distress. It didn’t sound like a dangerous group, let alone a gang of rough men who lived in a storm drain.

Zeke crept up the stairs and listened to the words inside.

“
Take it easy, sir …”
said one voice.

“
You get out of here!
” screamed a crotchety old voice in return.

Zeke noticed that the door in front of the conflict was open, and no shafts of light were coming through. He snuck up quietly and peered in through the crack between the interior of the door and the wall. He saw the back of an old, fat man, who was pointing a gun at two disheveled young men in the far corner.

“Just let us go, please?” asked one of the boys. “We’ll leave at nightfall, we promise.”

“And you’ll come back tomorrow with five more friends,” said the old man.

“We won’t …”

“How do I know you won’t?” asked the old man.

“Because we don’t have five friends,” said another young man. “We’re not here to hurt you, we’re just two guys with nowhere to go. We just need to spend the day here and—”

The old man picked up his gun to fire, and Zeke acted quickly by running into the room and catching the three men by surprise. The old man shot anyway, missing badly and putting a small hole through the window board. A beam of light poured into the room and the man was about to shoot again, but Zeke tackled and disarmed him. He pushed the gun away and the old man wheezed.

The room was white with sunlight and Zeke had to shield his eyes, but he heard the two young men run out of the room and tumble down the stairs. He felt the old man underneath him, struggling against Zeke’s weight and then calming down.

After a few moments, the man breathed deeply and spoke.

“I’m all right, son,” said the old man. “I don’t know who you are, but somehow I’m all right.”

Zeke’s bearings were good and he sensed that the old man was truly calm, so Zeke faced away from the bullet hole and dragged the old man out of the room with his left hand, shielding his eyes with his right.

/***/

Night fell and the young men were nowhere to be seen. The old man was named Jack Strader and had regained his composure. Zeke didn’t see any sign of the creature that had led him here, but there was a gang of cats on the first floor now, and they had made a mess of things. Strader was pouring cat food into bowls on the ground, and after he fed them he put a container of water out, and then he cleaned up after them. The old man worked slowly, but Zeke could tell that the house would be immaculate within the hour.

“Got lucky up there,” said Strader. “Sun was on the opposite side of the house from where the bullet broke the wall, so though we couldn’t see, the light didn’t do us any permanent damage. Still, I should thank you, son. I mean, I should really thank you.”

Zeke nodded in understanding, and Strader pet one of the cats on the floor, who purred in response.

“I’m thanking you because that wasn’t me up there, you understand?”

Zeke did.

“Bizarre circumstances lead men to do harsh things, sometimes the wrong things,” said the old man. “Those boys weren’t threatening me, and it wouldn’t have been self-defense, it would have been murder.”

Zeke felt that he could have forgiven the man even if the boys had been shot. The man was old and alone and had reason to be paranoid. The boys that had squatted in his house might have been good, but the next group to visit Strader might not be.

“You’re real dark,” said Strader. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone as dark as you. You’re so black you could probably walk outside during the day.”

Zeke shook his head
no
. Strader thought about this, and then laughed at the notion.

“Yeah,” said Strader. “Going outdoors after sunrise is like going into space, would kill anyone eventually. Hell, I looked straight at the moon the other night, damn near blinded me too.”

Strader pointed at his right eye, which was raw and red, as if it had been splashed with boiling water. The old man then pointed at Zeke’s skin, which was one unending shade of black, pure and unblemished.

“You’re built for these times, son,” said Strader. “but you’re not invincible. The sun’ll kill you just the same, it’ll just take longer to do it.”

Zeke agreed with this. He knew that few could survive more than ten seconds outdoors, and figured that he might be able to withstand twice that. He also knew that even a moment under the sun could cause him grievous injury, dark skin or not.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” asked Strader.

Zeke shook his head
no.

“That’s fine,” said Strader. “Most everyone nowadays has their own quirks, myself included. The sun killed all the normal ones, I guess. But I sense that though you’re odd, you’re kind. You’re big and bearded and mute, but I can tell you’re kind. You just have that aura about you.”

Zeke smiled at the comment, because it wasn’t the first time he’d heard a compliment like that. Others had always qualified their statements by first taking note of his enormous size, thick dreadlocks, dark skin or even his bulky clothing, but they always came around to speaking of his gentle aura.
Those that I meet always say that I’m kind despite my appearance … or perhaps because of it.

The old man took a moment and stared out the open door to the neighborhood beyond. The two kids that had escaped were now visible across the street, sharing a can of raw beans and looking like lost children.

“I’m odd too, but I’m not a murderer, son,” said Strader. “You might have saved my life and I thank you for that, but you kept me from killing those boys, and that means more.”

The old man got emotional and then gathered himself.

“Things like this happen and people die, and it’s sad, but the dying’s not the real tragedy,” said Strader. “The tragedy comes in what it
makes us do if we live.
It turns us into thieves, rapists, killers, cannibals and everything else.”

Zeke nodded, because he’d already seen many of those things, and he knew that it was only going to get worse.

“It almost happened to me too, were it not for you punching that gun outta my hand,” said Strader. “And in return, I’m gonna give you a gift.”

Zeke nodded a
thank you
.

/***/

They went to the man’s basement and it was covered with cats, perhaps fifty, who swarmed the old man as he came down.
It’s still a mystery how the rest of the animals survive,
but the cats survive because they come here.

A few cats purred and rubbed against Zeke, but they left him as soon as Strader pried the top off a bin at the far wall. He then dipped a bucket inside the container and pulled out a gallon of dried cat food. The pellets clinked as he poured the food into five metal bowls on the ground, and the cats descended on the bowls neatly, like piglets suckling on a sow.

“These cats don’t fight one another,” said Strader. “They all get a little bit of food, even the small ones. I guess their aggressive brothers got burnt off. In any case, I fed the neighborhood cats before the flare, and I’m still doing it now. You can’t get rid of cats, even at a time like this.”

The man walked over to the basement’s closet and picked up a padlock that connected a chain that kept the doors closed. Strader then took a key from his pocket to open the lock, and pulled on the chains until they slithered to the floor with a shrill
clank
. The old man opened the door and walked inside.

He grabbed a hand-cranked flashlight and gave it a few squeezes before shining the light to reveal rows and rows of food and supplies, enough to sustain a man for a year. The old man walked by the food and Zeke followed. They eventually ended on a small satchel in the corner, and the man opened it up. The bag held a shiny tent, seemingly big enough to fit four people comfortably, more if they were willing to be close. It was black on the inside and silver on the outside.

“You can live outdoors in this, son,” said Strader. “Full day, no problem. Tried it out myself, and it works. It’s yours.”

Zeke nodded and took the gift. He’d be just as cautious as he ever was, but the tent looked good. The thick interior looked like it could withstand a bomb blast, and the exterior looked like something that was built to survive space.

“I won’t need this anymore, kid,” said Strader. “I’m too old to walk a few miles, let alone go on a journey. Though I don’t know what your purpose is, you got life in those legs. My cards have all been played out, but you, you can use this tent to stay alive until you do …
something.
”

Zeke looked at the man and nodded another
thank you.

“One more bit of advice, son,” said Strader. “There is no salvation from this flare, so don’t go looking. You might find a way to live the rest of your life in this tent, and I hope you do, but don’t go looking for a magic place that can survive this thing. Go wherever you want to go, live however you want to live, but don’t go looking for salvation. If you do, you’re gonna find nothing, and you’re gonna end up burning alive.”

ASH

There was darkness and then he could see, but only in the faint light of dreams, not in the bright, clear view of reality. He doesn’t yet know of the flare, but even if he had been dreaming of it, the light of dreams is never that bright. Even the faint glow of a real bedside lamp sheds more illumination than anything seen while one is sleeping, even a burning sun.

As his dream takes shape he hears sound too, the crisp notes of Francesco Landini’s organ behind polyphonic voices extolling the virtues of love, seven hundred years after the notes were first written. He feels joy, and peace, and is happy to be alone with the music.

The polyphonic chorus keeps on, popping in and out with the rhythm, jumping over and crawling under each other’s notes, but never falling out of sync, not once. But then …

The subtle, straightforward seven-hundred-year-old tones of Landini’s organ morph into sharp, brazen piano notes. The understated love songs fade to the sweeping style of Rachmaninoff, and the polyphonic voices turn into the Russian master’s virtuosic style, slipping in and out of keys and moving with an unforgiving cadence. And then the music becomes soft, and the light increases to reveal that he’s by his father’s bedside, and the old man doesn’t have much time left.

/***/

Son
,
I’m sorry.

What?

I’m sorry
.
I was … hard on you.

Dad—

Let me speak.
The deep tone brooks no counterargument.
Let me speak.

He nods, and his father speaks.

I’m sorry I pushed you
.
I pushed you forward, and then away. It came at a cost, and we weren’t as close as we could have been. But I did this because I had to, do you understand?

Yes.

Do you really understand? I pushed you because of your potential. It was too great to waste. Now I’m here, earlier than I should be, but you’re launched. You had so much potential, and we put so much into you. Now’s your time to give back to the world, to do something. Do you understand this?

Yes.
The reply is more out of instinct than meaning.

Good.
Now it’s your turn. Every day you have is a gift you should give to the world. Every single day. Don’t ever settle for the ordinary, or even the exceptional. Do what they haven’t thought of yet, and bring things into being that they’ve never seen before. Do this, because so much will depend on you, and the world deserves nothing less.

/***/

Ash opened his eyes to darkness, the vague cloud of the dream fading into the room around him. Then came the realization that he was awake and whole, and that he didn’t know where he was. He had a splitting headache, his mouth tasted of coal, and it was a struggle to think of anything else. He rubbed his head and felt a bandage, and realizing that it was obscuring his vision, pulled it back to see that he was on a couch in a large room, dimly lit. It was his sister’s house … the basement? He was desperately thirsty and wanted something to cure the pain in his head, but he had so little energy that he couldn’t bring himself to get up. He decided to look around and figure out what had happened to him.

Was I drinking? No, but something happened.
This is Heather’s place, so I’m all right.

He saw that his twin sister Heather had left a jug of water by the couch, and a glass. He drank the water, and the pain in his head grew until he almost vomited the water back up, but he relaxed and was able to hold it down.

I don’t know what happened,
but Heather’s here, and it’s going to be all right.

Ash looked around the basement again and noticed that though the room was dark, it seemed to have a dull incandescence, as if it was lit by a black light. There were no lights on in the room, and Ash looked to the windows and saw that the curtains’ edges were glowing quite strongly, framing an outline of washed-out borders.

Ash thought about going upstairs, finding Heather and asking her what this all was about, but decided against it.

You’ve woken up like this before. Things are always disconcerting after a long sleep.

He pulled the light switch dangling from the ceiling, but it didn’t work. He pulled it again, and still nothing, so he walked over to a television set and turned it on, but nothing happened. He flipped the switch again, then the remote control, and then checked the plug, all to no avail. The television didn’t work.

He tried another light switch, a lamp, and played with a digital alarm clock, and none of them worked either.

Ash then went over to the curtains with the light bleeding from their edges. They were unnaturally thick and taped into place, as if to seal the edges from a hurricane. He took one of the edges off, looked outside and—

“Jesus
Christ
!” he yelled.

The light blinded him and he spun around and clutched his face, and in doing so his shirt got stuck to a piece of tape that held the curtain back. He fell to the floor, still clutching his eyes, and felt a sting on his lower back. He yelled again and then crawled away from the window, still in pain but scrambling like a crab on the ground. He reached the opposite wall and crumpled up in the fetal position, both his back and eyes still burning. His headache pulsed in whenever the other sensations pulsed out. The pain finally faded until he could handle it, but he still stayed in the fetal position, afraid to open his eyes and too consumed with panic to move.

Ash cussed and curled his body into a tighter ball as the pain in his eyes continued to sear. He cried and yelled, keeping his body clenched inward as if he were being beaten by a mob.

After a minute the pain in his eyes subsided, and so did the pain on his lower back. His head still hurt, but its intensity was dissipating, so Ash opened his eyelids. He saw stars at first, which faded until the room came back into focus, lit with an ethereal glow. He stood up and looked in the mirror to see that he had indeed been hurt, because his eyes were horribly red. He also noticed that his back looked as if it had been rubbed with a steel grate.

I only got caught in the curtains for a moment,
and it’s the deepest sunburn I’ve ever had.

Still, he was in one piece. His bloodshot eyes were still dark blue on the inside, and the burn on his back was localized to one area. His thick hair poked out from the bandage on his head, a little longer than it normally was, and he still had the same scars running across his right cheek, criss-crossing from the back of his neck to his chin.

The boy with the messed up face and no friends
, he thought, laughing dryly.
Whatever just happened I’m still here, all of me.

Ash examined the room and saw piles of cast-off medical equipment: IVs, pills, needles, alcohol swabs and a gurney. He picked up the bandage that had been put on his head and found that it was thick, dark and coarse to the touch. He noticed that it was heavy too, and a strange material lined the insides. The material was a soft plastic, and it also seemed to be lined with something itself.

This isn’t a bandage for a head wound.
This is to protect me from the sun out there.

Ash realized that the curtains behind him might still be open, and he turned around to see that the curtain he had torn loose was now flapping ever so gently in the wind. It wasn’t a threat to him now but could be at a moment’s notice, so he turned his burnt back to the curtain and looked for a solution. He found a roll of duct tape in the far corner that Heather had placed next to a pair of scissors. He grabbed the tape and cut five pieces and placed them on his right pant leg. He backed up to the curtain, still afraid to face it, and pressed the loose edge flush against the wall. He sealed it with tape, and then relaxed.

Ash was about to go upstairs, but he had to test the light once more, even though it was against his better judgment. He took his pinky finger and wedged it between the curtain and the window. He peeked it over the pane, and then withdrew after a second had passed. A moment later the pain set in as if he’d touched a stove, and the tip of his finger was red.

Less than a second and it burns.
Whatever this is, it’s real.

“Heather?! Hello?!” yelled Ash towards the ceiling. “You here?”

There was no answer.

“Anyone? Is anyone here?!”

He yelled three more times and pounded the ceiling with a broomstick, and then went up the stairs that led to the first floor. He banged on that door and yelled, but there was no answer there either.

/***/

Ash spent the next ten minutes playing with the bandage on his head. He knew that his finger would recover from the burn, but his eyes might not if he saw the light again. He moved the dark bandage around his head, and tried pulling it over his eyes quickly. He practiced this maneuver three times, and then positioned the bandage where it would allow the smallest bit of light in but would still allow him to keep his bearings.
This bandage can only do so much
.
It’s still dangerous out there,
and all I’ve got to protect me is a bunch of rags.

Ash slowly built up the courage to open the door to the first floor, but before this he pulled the bandage over his eyes so that he could only see a sliver of light and then looked towards the opposite wall for good measure. He opened the door and there was no change in light, so he stole a look from underneath his rags and saw that the first floor was much as his sister had normally kept it. It was neat and spotlessly clean, the only difference being that the windows were now covered with thick curtains that glowed from the edges.

“Hello?” asked Ash.

He searched for any clue to what had happened, but the house was no different than it had always been, a modern and airy two-story home, clean to the point of being sterile.

“Heather?” he asked once more, but there was still no answer.

He looked at the far corner of the living room and saw what looked to be a small cloth shelter at the far wall. The shelter sat neatly on the floor, with strong crisp lines. It wasn’t high but it was long, and it was completely opaque. It didn’t look like it posed a threat, so Ash decided to investigate and walked towards it cautiously.

It was set up like a one-man tent, built to hold a person lying down but not much else. It was long and thin, and though the outer material was opaque, Ash saw regular bed sheets sticking out from the bottom. Ash felt the outer material and realized that it was the same heavy plastic cloth that lined the interior of the mask that had covered his eyes.

He listened for a moment and then heard a faint wheezing from the bed sheets, and jumped back. The wheezing continued, and it sounded like a very sick person was trapped inside. Ash stood back, hesitant to even speak again.

This person might need my help.
But Heather must have set this up, and maybe I shouldn’t disturb what she’s done.

Ash took a step back and listened to the wheezing coming from the tent for another moment, before a horrid thought crossed his mind:
What if it’s Heather in there?

He knelt down next to it and listened.
Whoever it is, their breaths are quite shallow.
They might not be dying, but may be soon.

“Heather?” asked Ash, but no response.

Ash pulled gently at the covers of the tent, and they slid back easily to reveal blankets underneath. Ash felt the tent’s structure and realized that it wasn’t a tent at all, but rather a loose shell with covers on top of it. He gently removed one of the upper folds of the covering blanket and pulled it back. He saw a man, or at least what was left of one.

“
Kheee
…”

Ash jumped back in shock when he saw the person. He could only see a little bit of him, because most of the man’s skin was covered in bandages. What little skin Ash saw was blistered and raw and covered with a thick layer of pus.

“Sir,” said Ash, “can you—”

“
Kheee
…,” wheezed the man again, and he started to shake.

The man continued to tremble until he was in an outright seizure, and his mouth began to foam.

“Heather!” screamed Ash.

The man began shaking violently, and the cloth around his head came loose. The man’s eyes were pale and sightless, his eyelids nonexistent, and his forehead a pale-red matte of flesh. The man started to make choking noises, and Ash put his hands on him to turn him over on his side. The man’s pus had soaked through his bandages, and Ash’s fingers stuck to the man’s body.

The man was beginning to choke on the foam that was coming from his mouth.
I need to turn him over but I have to do it gently.
What if his melted skin has fused to the floor?

Ash felt a hand on his shoulder, and it gently pushed him aside. He stood up to see his sister Heather kneeling down by the man, moving him to his side to let him cough. The man spat fluid onto the floor, and it came out black, red and thick, a dark ball of mucus. She took a thin tube from her pocket and put it in his nostril, threading it upwards and inwards, and then attached a bulb to the end. She squeezed the bulb and more dark mucus came out, which she deposited onto a pile of gauze on the floor.