Notes From the End of the World (17 page)

Then I see it.

Sprayed across the glass doors is one word. “CLEARED.”

“No!” I pull toward the doors, but Nick holds me back, his grip on my hand becoming painful as my fingers crush together.

“Don’t! They could still be in there.” Nick pulls me away from the doors and behind the skeletal shrubs that line the base of the building, snagging our coats on the prickly branches. “Shhh.”

We wait a moment, but there’s nothing but stillness and silence. My eyes tear up, and I blink hard to clear away the blurriness. My stomach clenches, nausea hitting in waves. Even when I first saw Audrey and her stupid mangled leg, I’ve never been so stricken with dread. I wish I could run away, back home, and just start things over, rewind back my life to nine months ago.

But we have to go and see. We have to see what we already know, just to confirm it.

“Come on,” Nick says, and we move around to the rear of the hospital. My mind races—in a few moments, we’ll go inside and there will be Dad, in his coat, looking tired and pissed that we’ve shown up because it’s too dangerous to stray very far from our house. He’ll be fine. He’ll be alive, and there to keep me safe like he always has been.

The emergency ambulance entrance is partially blocked by a fire and rescue truck that has been vandalized and stripped. A front tire is missing, a hose hangs from the gas tank like a thin, limp tongue lolling out onto the ground. The rear doors hang ajar. Everything that can be taken has been taken from inside.

We creep around toward the back door, scanning for movement, people living or dead.

The automatic sliding doors are stuck, leaving an opening about a foot wide. Nick peeks inside, then forces the doors apart. We step inside to a deserted, dim hallway. Overhead, the fluorescent lights hum and flicker, the threat of complete uninterrupted darkness very real.

My mind races. Why does Dad continue to come here?

We move down the hall, more afraid than cautious. The only sounds are our sneakers padding dully on the floor and our breaths coming too fast. I want to vomit, I’m so afraid of what we’re going to find. I silently curse Mom for taking our gun, something I’ve done on a semi-daily basis since she vanished.

We make a right turn into the main hall E.R. waiting area—empty. The last day I volunteered, months ago, when the N-Virus was still something we all thought we’d beat, pops into my head. How crowded it was. The stink of the sick.

There’s a different smell now. It’s coppery, ripe, familiar, unpleasant.

We find the first of the murdered behind the nurses station—pretty Jolee has been shot in the head. Her eyes are wide, staring upward toward the ceiling. Drying blood frames her head like a wretched halo. Her expression is somewhere between horror and relief.

“Damn,” Nick mutters, pulling me away. “They’ve been here.”

I want to press my face against his chest and cry for her. What a goodhearted, funny, hard-working woman she was. The unfairness of it all.

I want to believe that Dad got out. That he is hiding somewhere, but my heart is breaking. I know what’s awaiting me.

The few people who are left—the uninfected—have been executed as if they were Shamblers. It’s hateful and indiscriminate. There’s nobody coming to save us. They’re just there to end things. Maybe their gift to everyone is making sure death is quick and final instead of a kind of horrible limbo.

Unable to control myself, I scream for my father. “Dad, it’s me. Please come out!”

“Don’t, Cindy. We don’t know for sure—”

“Dad,” I call out again.

There’s a male nurse lying in the middle of the hall. Drying gobs of brain and bone scatter the wall behind him. I never knew his name, as it seemed he was always leaving as I was coming in, but I remember his dreamboat smile.

I tear my hand free of Nick’s and start running, calling Dad over and over. I throw open every door I come to.

“Cindy. Don’t be crazy!” Nick calls, sprinting after me. “This is too dangerous.”

I ignore him and crash through the door leading to the stairway. I race up, taking two steps at a time. I’m crying, my nose clogging with snot, my eyes again becoming hot and swollen. I’m shaking all over.

On the second floor are patient rooms and the pediatric ward. Smiling giraffes, dancing elephants and insanely happy lions decorate the walls, but the ward is empty. No kids. No staff.

My frantic running slows to a jog. I’m puffing through my mouth, crying uncontrollably. The nurses’ desk on this floor is deserted. The supply closet next-door has been pillaged.

I throw myself against the first door I come to and find an empty bed. The same with the next. Nick trails me, the gun up and ready.

“Dad?” I call again, no longer really expecting a response, but hoping for some sort of miracle.

Most rooms appear untouched for quite a while. Some have been cleaned, others left with beds unmade, sheets and pillows stained with blood. I.V. bags hang half-empty, lines left dripping slow.

In the next room, an extremely elderly woman lies, her head off her pillow, one side of her skull crushed in. Blood is like spilled paint around tufts of cottony white hair and running down the side of the mattress onto the floor.

I do not step all the way into the room. There’s nothing inside that I want to see up close.

It’s two doors down that I find the things that will always haunt my nightmares.

Dad. My poor, gentle, beautiful father. My hero. My protector.

He’s slumped over a vague shape in the bed, a youngish man, emaciated, and obviously in the last stages of a terminal illness. The young patient has a small, perfect bullet hole in his temple, as though the muzzle of the gun was placed right against his head. Blood has sprayed onto the opposite side of the pillow where the bullet came through in a mess of blood, bone, brain and hair.

Dad’s missing the left side of his face. His right eye is cloudy, staring at nothing. His glasses are on the floor next to his loafer, one lens cracked.

His hand is entwined with the hand of the young man.

I approach slowly, my mind not grasping what I am seeing. “Dad?” I touch his shoulder and know he’s been gone for hours. There’s no warmth under my touch, only cooling, stiffening flesh.

He’d come to the hospital this morning with the intentions of mercifully helping this young man out of this terrible world. But in the end, he’d tried to protect his patient from the terror of dying at the hands of those soldiers.

I press my face against my father’s shoulder, unmindful of the thickening blood under my sneakers. I breathe in the faint scent of his cologne and the smell of the laundry softener on his lab coat.

“This isn’t real,” I whisper.

Nick wraps his arms around me and holds me tightly against his chest. I feel his hot, damp tears against my cheek as they mix with my own.

Chapter 25

April 18

Nick

Cindy was broken.

We decided to stay until it starts to turn warm because her mental and physical state was too fragile following her father’s death. She withdrew from me despite all I did to make her feel safe. She was broken and still is. But she’s healing. I see the girl I’ve grown to love beginning to reemerge.

There’s nothing here in Palm Dale now. No military. Few survivors. And those who have survived are afraid and distrustful of each other.

We haven’t banded together like in the movies. If anything, we’ve pulled apart, afraid of having to share or what the others will take.

Ben never told us where the cabin is located.

Going through my things the other night, I found a slip of paper with the name “Colin” scribbled on it, followed by an email address and an Instagram handle. It takes me a few moment of wondering before the light comes on, and I remember who exactly the mysterious “Colin” is.

The nerdy dude from the sporting goods store over at the Palm Dale Mall. I hit him up a few times when the internet is getting a signal, but haven’t gotten anything in return.

Until last night.

When he’s face flashes on the screen of my iPad, I question myself. Is this the same cat from the mall? He’s extremely thin and looks much older. I assumed he was a college kid, but this guy looks like he could be thirty. Still, there’s that shock of bright red hair that I remember.

“Colin?”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t appear to remember me, but the mention of Audrey and Cindy kickstarts things.

Long story short, we’re picking him up in two days, and we’re getting the hell out of here. Sure, it may not be smart. He could be a psychopath. But we’re going to have to take that gamble.

We have to find other survivors out there. Ones who aren’t paranoid and selfish. At some point, the world has to wake up and climb up out of the dirt. We need to rebuild.

Maybe this time we’ll get things right.

I don’t want to come across as some kind of self-important asshole, but I’m sure nobody will ever see this besides myself. And I doubt I’ll go back and reread it. Not much I want to relieve or remember about the past year, except for Cindy.

Cindy. For a while I thought I’d lost her. The darkness in our lives had become so heavy that her eyes had lost their light. But losing a father (or a mother, or both) will do that to a kid. And we’re still kids. For all the growing up we’d been forced to do since this things first started, we’re still just kids.

I try not to think of the things we should be doing now. Getting ready for spring break, for graduation. For prom. For college. For getting out of Palm Dale because we want to, not because we must get out.

I hear Cindy come inside. She’s been out running. She begged me for one last run around the neighborhood. We usually go together—the running has become a therapy for sorts for both of us. We’ve taken plenty of precautions against the Shamblers. A shovel behind one house, a pick axe behind the next. A baseball bat planted among a stand of overgrown shrubs. Usually we don’t need them, but sometimes a Shambler does show up.

Just to remind us why we’re running.

Today, I stayed back to get everything in order one final time—making sure the M5 is still in good condition, then repacking. Colin claims to have supplies and food, as well. Just as long as he’s able to pull his own weight, we’ll be good.

I take a long look at Cindy, drink her in, more relieved that’s she’s back than I let on. Her hair’s coming out of its ponytail in wisps against her cheek, forehead and neck. Her legs slim and toned.

There’s blood on the bottom edge of her shorts and the outside of her thigh. It’s only a few drops, but I notice.

“How was your run?” I ask.

“It was good. A good run,” she tells me, but then adds a little wink.

“Liar,” I say. She’ll tell me what happened later. Right now, it doesn’t matter. She’s with me and that’s all that matters now. That’s all that will ever matter.

She slips her arms around me and her lips brush mine, as soft as a feather. I breathe her in—the heady scent of her sweat, the spritz of jasmine body spray she’s always worn on the back of her neck. For a moment, I’m taken back to that warm late summer day when in September. The only difference is the mud has been replaced with splatters of blood. And neither of us are so innocent anymore.

“I’m just glad I’m back,” she whispers, before kissing me again.

“I am, too.”

*The End*

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Donna Burgess is an author of dark fiction and poetry who enjoys surfing, playing soccer, and painting. She has a deep affection for Monty Python, horror movies, Bruce Springsteen and baseball. Over the past two decades, her fiction and poetry has appeared in genre publications like
Weird Tales, Horror Express, Chizine
and many others.

She holds B.A.s in Journalism and English and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Psychology.

Visit her on the web:
donnaburgess.com

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