The Remaining (19 page)

We sit and watch the sun start to nod off to sleep. Side by side on this swing, a small dog on my lap. The snug feelings of being overfed and overcomfortable and overloved. Holding his hand in mine. Just . . . being.

A small house. Fixed up to perfection.

A small lawn. Nothing too much.

Small things to decorate the small tree of our life together.

Small because we don’t need much. We just need each other.

That’s all anybody needs, right?

Right?

Allison knows that was the dream once. This thing she held on to even after growing up and realizing that the small
house with the picket fence doesn’t really exist. Yet still she has saved it for herself.

Now, watching the weary world all around her, Allison knows the picket fences are forever gone. The whitewashed house on the corner with the little white dog and the white cabinets is a blinding mirage in a hot, searing desert. Nothing will ever be whitewashed again. Nothing.

Come to me, child.

She finally spots the entrance of the hospital, but all she can see is people leaving it. Cars and SUVs and ambulances litter the parking lot and the lawn. She notices a dead body that’s surely rotting in the hot sun strapped to a gurney right next to the ambulance it must have been carried in.

Dan leads Skylar and the rest of them to the entrance. The sliding-glass doors are jammed open.

“Think those things that attacked us are gone?” Sam asks.

“They must be,” Tommy says.

Dan turns to them. “Let’s hope there are still some doctors here or something.”

But it’s obvious once they walk inside that it’s going to be a long shot.

The reception area is empty. The place looks like everything else in this new world: ransacked and messy and overturned and out of sorts. Chairs are tossed on their sides. Bodies litter the floor. Glass covers the ground. The electricity is out, the lobby illuminated only by the sunlight.

Dan is now carrying Skylar in his arms. “Let’s find her a room and lay her down.”

They begin walking down a hallway that only gets darker the farther they get from the entrance. A pharmacy on their left is bare, its shelves picked clean. Some empty bottles are on the floor along with upside-down furniture. Jack jumps over the counter and begins to look through everything but there’s nothing to find.

We made a mistake coming here.

As they look for a room, they see a woman dressed in a nurse’s outfit helping a patient out.

“Please
 
—we need help. Anything you can do.”

The woman doesn’t listen to Dan’s plea. “There’s no one left. We’re getting out. They’ve got supplies at the Cape Fear Bridge.”

The nurse continues to walk with her patient.

Everybody is leaving.

We should’ve done the same.

More bodies litter the floor and the rooms they pass. So many dead. So many lives just taken.

And so many left behind in total and complete despair.

Dan soon finds a room with light coming in through the windows. He gently places Skylar in the bed while Jack and Tommy look for any kind of medicine that might help her.

Allison pulls up a chair beside the bed, stroking Skylar’s hair and trying to get some kind of response. But none comes.

Tommy heads into another room but soon comes back and slams the door shut. “Looks like there’s nothing left.”

“I’ll go floor to floor,” Jack says with a voice that sounds slightly out of breath. “Find her a doctor, something to help her.”

They’ve gone from one prison to another.

Allison holds Skylar’s lifeless hand. “You’re going to be okay, Sky.”

“We’re going to beat this,” Jack says.

But Allison knows the reality is that there’s nothing to beat. The game is over and the victor has been chosen. They’re merely spectators in the crowd trying to figure out how to get back home after watching the war unfold.

Jack heads out of the room. Tommy waits for a moment, then tells them all to stay there. But before he can leave, Allison tells him to wait a moment. She stands and goes over to the doorway.

“You’re right, you know,” she says.

Tommy just looks at her, confused.

“The first night we met. I still remember it too. You’re right
 
—we did just click.”

She gives him a hug and whispers to him to be careful. He gives her a caring, gentle smile. Then he’s gone.

Allison knows it might be the last time she ever sees Tommy. Or Jack. Or both.

Sometimes there is so much grief and terror that the well inside starts to overflow. And it’s all you can do to keep your head above water to breathe. There’s no thinking and
no planning. There is just doing. You just keep doing what you need to do.

And right now, what Allison needs to do is be there for Skylar. To help her dying friend before it’s too late.

Allison and Sam sit against the wall watching the couple in the shadows. Dan can only hold Skylar’s unresponsive arm in his hands and watch her. The three of them
 
—Dan, Allison, and Sam
 
—are quiet while they wait for the guys to come back with any kind of hope. The formerly glowing bride is now pale and bloody and unconscious. They all know it’s just a matter of time.

“I read somewhere that the light you see when you die is the brain releasing massive amounts of endorphins to ease the pain of death,” Sam says.

“There are a lot of people who think that, but there are a lot of other people who think the light is a sign of God’s existence,” Allison replies.

“Do you believe that?”

She nods, thinking of the prayer she prayed this morning in the darkness of the church basement. Crying out for help and salvation in the pit. Asking, begging God to help them and save them. But no help or salvation came.

But I still know God’s up there. He has to be.

“I do. If these bad things exist out there, then surely there are good things. It all depends on how you look at it.”

She feels something stirring inside her soul. The ticking
clock, the kind that’s winding down just like Skylar’s life, can almost be heard. It’s following her like the violent fluttering of the demons.

Allison knows there’s unfinished business between God and her. She just still doesn’t know what to say. Or how to say it. Or when to say everything.

How do you finally come before your Maker after a life of running away from him?

It can feel and taste their fears, their anger, their questions. It also can see the bright light that tries to break these things. It’s attracted to that light to blot it out.

There is the fighter named Jack, the doer. The one always leading, the one always ahead even though he doesn’t know where the path leads. He currently looks through empty drawers in empty rooms but it knows he will find nothing but the very thing residing in his heart and soul. Emptiness.

Jack is with the other doer, the more reserved soul who watches and waits, the one named Tommy. The two of them continue room to room looking for hope, looking
for answers, looking for salvation. They pass the chaplain’s office and see the chaplain dead at his desk.

The dead don’t speak and don’t give answers because they’re long gone. Just like these two will be soon enough.

They arrive at the cafeteria and Tommy asks Jack if he can smell the odor in the air. They open the door to find the stacks of bodies. Rotting, decaying bodies in a hot, dark hospital.

It knows this is the end. This is the time for it and its kind to finally do anything and everything they want. To wreak havoc. To cause chaos.

It gets closer, watching, waiting.

“Do you hear anything?” Tommy asks.

It can see his fear, his frustrated soul that wants to do something but can’t. The anger. Oh, the anger in these two. Anger at the one who caused this. Anger at their Maker, the one they refuse to even acknowledge.

It knows its Maker and knows its God and knows the pecking order. It knows where it will be eventually. But all it can do now is continue to hurt and harm and cause this kind of exquisite terror.

“Shh!” Jack says.

It watches them in the dark. They can’t see it but it can see them. Can feel them. It puts a hand so close as if to touch them. But not now. Soon but not now.

The farther they get, the more terrified the two young men become. It delights knowing the slight sounds it makes result in this. Good. That’s what it wants.

Soon there will be other business to attend to as well.

“Come on,” Jack says. “Let’s keep looking.”

They look, not knowing it follows them. It’s been trailing them for quite some time.

It’s waiting until it’s time.

It’s waiting until it can finally end their hopes once and for all.

The two figures argue even while they die. They argue about the man between them. This man who didn’t do anything to be with them. This man who still hasn’t said a single bad thing about anyone.

Dying.

And one of them condemns the man in the middle, mocking him, ridiculing him, demanding something. Anything.

But the other calls the ridiculing man a fool.

“Don’t you fear God even though you’re about to die?”

This is what the man tells the other.

“We deserve to be on these crosses but this man doesn’t. He’s innocent.”

Then he tells the dying man in the middle the only words he can utter.

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

In between the darkness and the light, Skylar remembers this picture. This scene. It unfolds as if she were standing in front of the three hanging men on their crosses. She hears the words and knows she wants to be like the second thief. She wants to believe. She wants forgiveness.

Please Jesus . . . remember me. Please . . .

Then her eyes open and she sees Dan smiling at her. Skylar knows it’s almost time to go. Each breath is a strain. She can’t move, can barely speak, can barely even see.

But I can believe. I can do that.

Poor Dan. Poor Dan.

“Hi, sweetie,” she barely manages to get out.

“Sky, I’m here. I’m here.”

Allison and Sam approach the bed as well. They seem to be in disbelief that she’s still coherent.

“Are you hurting?” Dan asks.

I’ve been hurting my entire life in one way or another but no more.

“I don’t feel anything,” she utters.

“That’s good.”

He brushes her hair. She knows Dan would have been a good husband. He would have been there for her at all times. He would have provided for them. He would have
been a good father. She smiles at him, and in response Dan starts to cry. She doesn’t want him in any more pain.

“Dan?” she whispers.

“I’m still here.”

She thinks of the crosses, of the man in the middle. This person who was very much a man, this man who could very much die. A God who allowed him to do just that.

God’s Son.

It’s unbelievable and always has been.

Until now.

“If you didn’t go to church where I grew up, people looked at you funny. You know that. It was a thing
 
—maybe a Southern thing. So that’s what I did. But I never really believed. I never really, truly thought there was a Jesus who came down to save me. I never really understood that I had all these sins that needed forgiving. But I get it now. I get it and I want you to know
 
—it’s okay. I forgive you because God forgives me.”

Dan looks at her. “How did
 
—?”

“I heard you tell the others,” she says. “We all make mistakes. There’s a place we can take those to. There’s a thing we can nail them to.”

Her eyes close for a moment and she sees the cross in the shadows of the fading light.

“You can nail it to the cross and let it go, Dan. You can let someone else take that burden.”

She breathes out. She’s scared. Yes, scared and uncertain.
But the peace inside her soul balances that. She ties that peace around her heart.

“I can see it now,” she tells them. “It’s . . . beautiful. It’s so . . . bright.”

It’s the bright light of sandy, warm shores and morning sunlight and reflecting snow and shining stars. It’s glorious. She sees it all and it welcomes her with a glowing smile.

“She can’t breathe,” Dan says.

His voice echoes from far away.

I need to leave you.

“Stay with me,” he calls out. “Please
 
—Sky
 
—stay with me. Please.”

The restlessness. The confusion. The never-ending intensities. The fears. The longing. The desperate, needy, selfish longing for more.

It’s all gone now.

“Please. No!”

With all the strength she has left, she squeezes his hand.

Death is not about despair. It’s not about disappearing. It’s about finally knowing and declaring that there is a heaven and an eternity.

It’s not too late, Dan. It’s never too late.

She feels like the thief who slipped in just in time.

She feels joy.

She finally feels free.

“Why?”

The voice scratches across Allison’s heart like grinding fingernails on a chalkboard. She stands staring at Dan and the distress on his face. Not even twenty-four hours ago, the same face stared at the girl of his dreams and pledged to be there for her in sickness and health till death separated them. But death isn’t supposed to be here. Not so soon. Not now.

“Breathe with me,” Dan yells to the empty body. “Someone help me.”

She puts a hand on his arm. “There’s no one here to help her.”

Dan keeps trying, holding Skylar, not giving up.

“Breathe.” Between sobs. “Breathe.”

He soon sees that she’s nothing more than a corpse. Tears run down Dan’s cheeks as he shakes his head in disbelief and anger. “No.”

She sees him clench his fist and his jaw.

Still shaking his head, he looks toward the window. “I hate You!” he shouts.

Allison doesn’t ask whom the comment is directed toward. She’s thought the same things, but that’s only because it’s too late.

It’s too late for all of them.

In the darkness, still clinging to the faint hope that they can save their friend, Tommy and Jack look through another room. Jack is searching a closet when he stops for a moment and turns to Tommy.

“Why do you have to get to a point where something’s going to be taken from you to realize how important it is?”

Tommy nods. He doesn’t know.

“It’s sad,” Jack continues. “That it had to take the end of the world for me to wake up.”

“You don’t have to explain. I know you love her.”

Jack stares at him for a minute. There’s no anger on his face. Just exhaustion and bewilderment.

“Thanks for being there for her.”

“Don’t screw it up,” Tommy says, breaking the serious mood with a little levity.

They both laugh. They’re okay. They’re cool again.

Neither of them knows that things are far from cool back in the hospital room they’d left. Things have gone from bad to worse.

And things are only going to continue downward.

Allison sits on her knees by the bed holding the body of her closest friend. She closes her eyes to pray but can only see Skylar’s smile and Lauren’s big, bright eyes. Laughing as they walked, the three of them, hand in hand on the beach. The sun hovering in the sky, the future staring at them with a smile. So many plans talked about. So many dreams shared.

All gone. Forever gone.

She knows her parents are gone. The rest of her family. Whatever friends weren’t at the wedding. All gone. All dead. All taken by God.

But I was left behind. I didn’t deserve to be taken.

So she silently prays. There’s nothing left to do. She can weep for Skylar or she can curse God or she can sit there dumbfounded but she chooses to ask
 
—no, beg
 
—for forgiveness. For another chance. For hope. For grace.

God I’m sorry I never thought of
You.

For nearly three decades, Allison has only thought of herself. Of her plans and her career. Her love for Jack and her place in the world with him. Her friends. Her things. Her, her, her.

Please God help me. Help us all.

She knows she deserves to be down here with the rest of the remaining souls. Those who didn’t bother to find time or energy or care to have a real relationship with God. Who never thought anything of his Son and who never really even believed in his Spirit.

I know You’re the only way, God. Please. Please help me. I want to believe. I want to see the light. I want to know there’s still hope and still time. Wash away all my mistakes like the cold creek water rinsing muddy feet. Make me clean, Lord. Make me Yours.

Dan curses behind her. Her body shakes and the tears lining her cheeks won’t stop.

I ask that You save me, God. I believe in You and believe that Your Son can take away my sins. Please, God. Please, Jesus. Please.

“What are you saying to the Man Upstairs?” Sam asks behind her.

Allison turns and stands, seeing the Goth girl looking at her with skepticism. “Apologizing for what it took for me to realize the truth. Hoping he’s taking Sky into his arms right now. Hoping
 
—praying
 
—that there’s room to take me as well.”

Dan paces the room and curses as he listens to her words. “How can you sit there and pray to a God that would let this happen? Seriously, she was your friend.”

“Dan
 
—”

But he storms out and leaves them.

Allison understands. She could be angry. She
is
angry. But she has no right to be angry at God for supposedly abandoning them when they’ve spent their lives abandoning him.

She sighs. Then has an idea.

There’s not much time left.

She knows the clock is ticking and there’s just not enough time to say the things that need to be said.

“Will you do something for me?” Allison asks as she picks up Sam’s phone.

Sam nods and looks curious.

“It won’t take long,” Allison tells her. “But it’s important. Life-or-death important.”