Authors: Matt Darst
Van reasons for a moment. If you dress like a transvestite, meaning, if you cross-dress, you become, in essence, a transvestite, at least for the duration you’re dressed like one. Burt’s actually right. Van nods his approval. “Good one, Burt. Now, go back to sleep.”
Burt smiles and drifts off to a world where deceased cannibals don’t exist and heroes, like Brom Sybal, always win.
**
It is two months since the crash.
Van regularly shares point with Ian. He’s getting adept at it. His eyes are always moving, always inspecting his surroundings. He vows never to be surprised again.
Still, Ian thinks, Van can’t seem to keep his mouth shut. Today he’s decided to critique some of the finer points of the English language.
“Do you think,” he asks, “there are Chinese people anymore? I mean, actual living, breathing, Chinese people?”
“I don’t know,” Ian responds flatly. “There were a lot of them, I hear.”
“If there are, I hope we don’t ever meet them.”
And why is that, Van?
“Because English would be too difficult to learn.”
More difficult than Chinese?
“Probably.” Van rationalizes. “We don’t spell words phonetically. If I’m Chinese, I’m thinking a word like ‘ghoul,’ G-H-O-U-L is spelled G-O-O-L, may be even G-U-L. I mean, it’s bullshit that so many combinations of letters can make the same sounds.”
GH can sound like a G or an F.
X can sound like a Z or a CKS.
C can sound like an S or a K.
T can sound like an ED, etcetera.
“We even have silent letters, for crying out loud! Ks, Gs, Ps, Hs, even Ts. Why? Letters don’t want to be quiet!” There’re too many letters, too many blends. “I bet we could cut the alphabet down to twenty letters or fewer if we tried. I bet the people who invented our alphabet made it so hard just to keep foreigners out. You know, making certain words secrets, like a password.”
Ian grunts. He’s not really listening, but that’s not going to stop Van. It never has. It never will.
“And what about the plural form of some words? Why can’t we just add an S to everything? But you’ve got things like deer and fish that don’t get an S. Mostly, wildfowl, some hoofed mammals. Why not ‘gooses’ instead of ‘geese,’ ‘mouses’ instead of ‘mice?’ Or, if we’re going to have special rules, let’s apply them uniformly. If the plural of goose is geese, shouldn’t multiple moose be called meese? And if the plural of mouse is mice, and louse is lice, shouldn’t house be hice? So many rules, so many exceptions. It must drive non-English speakers crazy.”
Ian just grunts. He wishes he was in the back, holding Kari’s hand.
Then he hears something. He puts a hand on Van’s shoulder, halting him. He shushes. “Listen.”
There’s a noise, the sound of fuzz, akin to breaking waves.
Radio static.
And then the undeniable sound of a voice.
There’s someone ahead.
Van and Ian look at each other, their faces mirroring expressions of surprise. But then one of the reflections disappears as Van breaks Ian’s hold and runs ahead.
“Van, no!”
“Hey!” Van shouts. “Hey, we’re here!”
Van gets thirty feet before he feels the thud to his chest. Only then does he hear the gunshot. He touches his heart, raises his fingers to his face.
There’s blood, lots of blood. It stains the fabric of the red polo.
He frowns and looks up, searching for the shooter.
The second bullet hits him in the forehead.
Everything goes black for Van.
Forever.
Ian is first there, Kari a moment behind.
There’s nothing they can do but cry in anguish.
From his roost in a deer stand, just two dozen feet from the protected area, the soldier sees the rush of people to their fallen comrade and realizes his mistake. Ghouls don’t cry.
There are four of them now. The youngest, a woman, strokes the dead man’s face. She buries her head in his chest.
He radios in, both the good and bad news, as a ginger-bearded man starts to berate him from below.
**
Eighteen years after it all started, Peter is a hermit.
The weather turned bitterly cold that November eighteen years back, too cold to continue his trek. Peter needed to find shelter. He needed to hole up.
He blamed global warming for the early freeze. He cursed the government for not taking Al Gore seriously, then he cursed them for the plague.
Peter had studied the Gaia hypothesis in college and believed the Earth to be a complex system, almost like giant watch. When the watch’s gears spin in synchronization, when all elements are in harmony, the time it keeps is precise and would make the Swiss proud. But when a gear spins too fast or too slowly, it can wreak havoc on the system, no matter its size.
Humans were a cog out of time, propelling the Earth to a cataclysm predestined by their decades of misuse of natural resources, pollution, overpopulation, and deforestation. A good watchmaker simply removes the defective gear and replaces it with one that works. And that, Peter assumed, is what Mother Earth had done.
He often wonders about how “they” got here. Global warming could have been the culprit. As the Earth heated, the glaciers thawed. Perhaps they unleashed bacteria encased in ice for millions of years and previously unknown to man. Peter read an article twenty years back or more about a core sampling taken from the Beacon Valley of Antarctica. It had contained dozens of bacteria. When defrosted, the bacteria sprung back to life, creating proteins and reproducing. While they constitute the oldest known life forms to mankind, they also constitute the life forms man knows least about. Scientists sequenced their various genomes, finding that 46% of the strand was unique, unlike anything they had ever seen.
Bacteria transfer genes, a significant factor in evolution. But, maybe, with the melting of the ice caps, genes were transferred across
time
, visiting a prehistoric pestilence on man.
Peter has lots of time to think about this and other things here in this cabin hidden deep in the woods.
He found this cottage near I-57. Unfortunately, he found the inhabitants, too, and he finished off what the plague had started. He barely survived the winter there, his canine companion his only anchor to sanity. In those short, dark days, days filled alternatively with hunger and the destruction of dozens of demons, Peter resolved that he was alone, likely the last of his kind.
So he spent the next winter there, and the winter after that, and every winter since. Finder’s keepers.
This afternoon, as Peter stokes a warm fire, he is alarmed by the sounds of his dogs barking. “Jack, Molly,” he calls to the descendents of his rescued boxer as he stokes embers in his fireplace. “Take it easy.”
There hasn’t been an incident in almost a year. They grow fewer and farther between, convincing Peter that his isolation is nearly absolute.
It’s probably a raccoon outside the cabin again. Maybe a possum. Still, you can never be too sure.
The barking continues. They scratch at the door trying to get out. “Back,” Peter says to them, and they quiet and clear the door for him.
They are an odd mix, something between a boxer and a wolf, the result of one of Addison’s escapes—yes, the name of his old train station stuck—while in the throes of heat. These dogs are much too precious to be risked. They are the last of Addison’s litter, the ones that chose to stay.
Most of the others ran off with the wolf pack.
They must have liked their chances better in the wild.
He occasionally sees them tracking him as he hunts, making sure he’s still safe. He leaves them a bit of every kill.
But the risk of losing Jack or Molly to the pack is nothing. There’s a bigger risk.
The dead things don’t care what they eat.
So he goes alone. With a baseball bat. A baseball bat is about all it takes nowadays. Sure it requires a lot more patience, but that’s okay. What else has he got but time?
He steps out cautiously, bat cocked. He takes a few strides forward.
He has cleared the trees for forty feet on all sides, and he watches the perimeter for movement.
Well
, he thinks,
at least I might get some exercise
.
There’s a rustling directly in front of him. He readies himself, but then there’s movement to the left. Then from another position, even farther to the left, and then from the right.
Oh my God
, he thinks.
They’re everywhere
.
One directly before him steps into the clearing.
Peter readies his bat. He’s not ready to die. Or worse. Not just yet. “Bring it,” he mutters.
Peter is puzzled. This one wears protective gear, almost like a padded HAZMAT suit. It must be hideous under that body armor and facemask.
Peter looks at his bat.
This is going to take a lot longer than he thought.
Then the others step out.
They are dressed in similar camouflaged gear, each with a rifle drawn. Just what is going on here?
The one in front flips up his mask. He’s human still, probably around Peter’s age. He offers his hands, palms up, a symbolic gesture that says they mean no harm. He tells the others to lower their weapons.
They immediately comply.
Then he addresses Peter. “Easy, easy.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Roger Gerome,” the man says. “What’s yours?”
**
Roger Gerome’s arrival is always trumpeted as an “event.” Statten and the elders just can’t wait to don their golden robes and glittering crowns.
Gerome’s audience with them goes well, as well as these excuses for formality can go. They are pleased with Roger’s most important discovery: antibiotics, both human antibiotics recovered from Swift Labs and animal antibiotics found at the University of Illinois. They are less pleased about this man Gerome has found.
Peter Sumner is married to a woman, and this woman has married another. They do not like the implications.
Roger tunes them out. He always does. He is anxious to get home and see his son.
It is not until his return home that Roger learns his son is missing. The elders never mention it.
It is a page from the church that waits for him on horseback. His youngish face is bruised, the result of another one of Statten’s explosive outbursts. The page tells Gerome of Van’s death. He even apologizes for it, asks for Gerome’s forgiveness. He says he should have defied Statten’s order.
What order?
Statten’s order. The order to keep the crash of Flight 183 secret. The order to not send word to anyone, even Gerome.
Then the page leaves Gerome alone with his rage.
Epilogue
Ian stands before a grave, a headstone, in the cemetery near the church. Sons of heroes are granted such an honor.
Ian wears a suit, no tie. He clutches something red against his chest.
Shoes.
He touches the tombstone, says a few words in his head. He smiles to himself. He’s praying. Van would have teased him mercilessly for being such a hypocrite.
He examines the trainers. They are clean, like new. He spent hours scrubbing them, scouring until there was nary a trace of dirt or grass or…
A violent memory grabs him and tries to hold him firm. Ian shakes his head for release.
He grips all four laces and pulls them away from his body. He twists them back over themselves, then under and through, tying the shoes together.
Ian bends slightly at the waist. He hangs the red Converse All-Stars gingerly over the granite marker. He balances them, strokes the name etched there. V. A. N.
He is aware that Kari is watching him, tenderly, from the sidewalk.
Goodbye, old friend.
Ian joins her side and enters the church.
**
Pastor Statten’s lecture is winding down.
The church is full again this Sunday, but today Ian did not have to worry about finding a pew. He and Kari stand near a small fountain just to the left of Statten’s pulpit. Kari holds a baby, and today he will be baptized.
Ian and Kari made a pact. They are going to keep Tempel-Tuttle’s secret. At least for now.
For now, it’s finally time for Wright to stop surviving and to start living.
As Statten drips water on the child’s head, he says the baby’s name. “Welcome to the family of Christ, Vincent “Van” Peter Sumner.” He almost chokes mid-way through.
They worshippers clap thunderously.
Ian looks into the crowd, and beams at a man in the first row. The man who sits between Josh on one-side and Anne and Burt on the other.
Peter smiles back, a tear streaming from his eye. For once he thanks God, thanking him for these gifts of his son…and grandson. He shifts to Anne, places his hand on hers and squeezes.