Grants Pass (22 page)

Yet still she did not turn back. As
she headed further west, past the tropical-fringed colonnades and tax-free
designer shops of the new
Biosfera
Plaza, she waited for that whispered
Run
away
. It didn’t come. Instead she made do with a long and forlorn glance
towards those empty, white-tiled buildings and the darkening way back home
beyond them, before she stepped down into the Old Town proper. The cobbled,
shadowed walkways of
La Tiñosa
.

Here, that crawling dread — that
relentless
niggle
— found her too fast. And this time without any
warning at all. It stripped her of the very last of her denial; it prized its
fingers from the rock face before dropping her into the empty abyss beneath.
She careered into a white stuccoed archway — and then backward into the cobbled
road. She clutched at herself in panicked misery. A cockroach crawled over her
exposed legs. Her voice was a reedy whisper.

“
Hello?”

Louise managed to stand again with
sobbed effort, clutching at a lamppost. She saw that her palms were studded
with grit, smearing blood against the hot metal — and she snatched them back to
her chest with another moan.

She looked back up the steps. Back
towards the static summits of the palm trees on the
Avenida
; towards its promenades and squares,
and then the wilted flags of the
bureaux de change
and basement
nightclubs beyond. The sun was an angry red ball sucked slowly beneath the
horizon.

Was it so inconceivable to imagine
that out of an island population of almost 130,000 she might be the only one
now left alive within its largest resort? Perhaps it was. But the desertion of
that whisper at her back suggested otherwise. As did the silent dusk that she
shared with the dead.

She reared up from the warm cobbles
with another plaintive cry, half-running, half-crawling her way back up the
steps. The main road stretched east and west into empty shadow; upon her right,
beyond the palms and their squat wide bodies, the Atlantic had swallowed
Playa
Fariones
completely, the ocean’s back and forth wash now an ugly, malignant
sound. The only sound.

Louise stepped into the road, walked
right to the central median, and drew in a shaky breath. This time the question
came out as a half-strangled scream that shot through her like electricity.

“
Hello?”

It echoed unanswered in the
darkening silence, and the panic that rushed stinging bile into her throat was
dampened only when her fingers found that sharp-edged square of paper in her
pocket.

“
What do I
do, Kayley? Oh God, what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

Kayley didn’t answer. A long swollen
finger of gold sunset followed Louise’s resumed and limped progress towards the
old harbor; her thirst suddenly choking shut her throat. Close to the vast
banners wrapped around lampposts that advertised boat and catamaran cruises,
Louise collapsed again. Her scream was raw and savagely afraid.

“
Kayley, I’m
sorry! I didn’t mean what I said before. Please come back! What do I do?
Please
!”

The approaching night mocked both
her screamed plea and futile efforts to stand again. She truly
was
alone. That knowledge terrified her. Not even pressing the damp and battered
square of paper to her mouth helped dilute its horror anymore.

Likely all that saved her from
herself was the sudden recognition of a sound she had missed beyond that of the
roaring, closing Atlantic. She looked up at the dim outline of the vast balcony
that stretched above the length of promenade — from the shadows of New Town to
Old. A generator. A light.

You’re going to go back down to La
Tiñosa, Louise. You’re going to go down to the harbor, and you’re going to find
a boat. You’re going to sail to America. You’re going to find Grants Pass.

Even in her hysteria, Louise
struggled to disguise an incredulous snort. But she couldn’t risk antagonizing
Kayley again. It was enough that she had come back. A boat was maybe the best
idea after all. She glanced back up at the invitingly bright oasis above her
head. But she needed to rest first. She needed to
drink
first. Perhaps
she could sail to Africa instead. Perhaps—

I’m only a voice in your head, Louise.
That voice had taken on a hard, brittle edge that was somewhere between fury
and petulance. I’m not here. I’m far away, and I’m getting tired of waiting.
I’m getting tired of waiting for you.

Despite the warning; despite the
snide threat of desertion, Louise sped towards the spiraling stairs that led up
from the promenade. Toward the light. Hope — even hopelessness — was too easily
defeated by something else. Something that was more than just thirst or the
need to rest. Or the need to placate her only remaining friend. The bar was
everything that Louise had lost. Everything that she had been in danger of
forgetting. 

At the top of the metal steps, she
veered right, running into an easel depicting a chalked outline of a
grasshopper above a scrawled promise of Big Screen Football and Fishbowl
Cocktails for €12.

The bar was in darkness apart from a
long tube of UV that ran the length of the bar and the neon cycle of its
jukebox. Louise ran for the jukebox first, her fingers stabbing at the scroll
buttons too furiously. The track lists snapped over and over in the silence.
She forced the last of her change into its plastic slot. To hear a voice — one
outside her head. Just a voice.

In the end, she chose more
carefully. Her hands had stopped shaking when she lifted the hatch of the bar;
when she liberated a cool Corona from a fridge beneath a poster advertising
Ladies *Nite* at Caesar’s
. Free entry before 11pm
had been scrawled
underneath in Sharpie ink
.

She perched on a stool overlooking
the darkening street as she sipped her beer in steadier-still hands; as Billie
Joe Armstrong sang about a Boulevard of Broken Dreams; as thoughts of plague
and death and apocalypse left her momentarily behind.

A faint, almost imperceptible breeze
came off the salty Atlantic, and she breathed it deep — for a moment pretending
that this was just another balmy Canarian night in high season. The crawling
dread in her belly almost abated. Almost quietened.

Until she thought of the stubbornly
silent and folded square of paper inside her pocket. That last frightened voice
on the radio. Kayley’s too easy faith in her friends and in her sanctuary. In
survival.

The last of the sun’s rays sunk deep
inside the slick black surface of high tide, and the promenade and its palm
trees vanished into darkness. Louise trailed her arms over the balcony and
closed her eyes. The heat clung to her like a shroud. In the distance, she
could hear the whined return of insects doubtless still the size of her fist.

Louise remembered the eerie
cornfields ahead of Mother Abigail’s rocking chair; she remembered that ugly
pink neon slash. She remembered Patrick. Her fingers suddenly twitched for her
pocket again.

Obviously, not everyone who reads
this would survive an apocalypse. Maybe I would not survive it. My want for
immortality says I would but that’s just me.

That breeze suddenly whistled
through invisible palm trees, snatching the hair from her face and tickling the
flesh on her stretched out arms. The paper fell away over the balcony, its
careful folds opening like wings as it caught the bar’s illumination in the
last breath of updraft. As it winked away into absolute darkness, Louise stared
in horror at her open palms, their steady spread-out fingers.

The jukebox settled back into hummed
expectancy. Louise’s moan was a low, sobbing, childlike plea. “Kayley?”

There was only silence. Silence and
dark empty windless space. No more than that.

Biography

Carole Johnstone

Carole was born in a small town
east of Glasgow. She now lives with her fiancé, Iain, in the southeast of
England, working as a radiographer and medical dosimetrist.

A relative newcomer to the world of
published fiction, she was first featured in
Black Static Magazine
in
early 2008, and is to appear in the anthologies:
In Bad Dreams Vol.2
,
Scenes
from the Second Storey
,
Voices
,
Dead Souls
, and
In the
Footsteps of Gilgamesh
.

Her website can be found at
http://www.carolejohnstone.com
.

Afterword

There are few things more
effective or powerful than the beginning of a certain type of post-apocalyptic
story. Into a scene of utter devastation — or more often desolation — a
character wanders invariably alone. Confused and afraid. And — we’re pretty
certain — in a whole world of trouble. Whatever the setting: a slum, a
hospital, an overgrown metropolis, an isolated mountain retreat, the intention
is always to shock. To frighten with the altered familiar. To make us think of
ourselves and wonder, What If?

I chose Lanzarote as a setting only
partly because it is an island in a comparatively isolated archipelago.
Lanzarote is an island of volcanic origin. In contrast to its few coastal
resorts, its interior is made up of vast mountain ranges, desert landscapes and
volcanic tunnels. To stand upon the
Montañas del Fuego
and look down
upon alien fields of rock and solidified lava streams is to imagine another
world. Or the ending of our own.

I wanted to write a story that
begins with monsters and ends with worse. A story where the protagonist is
left
alone, confused and afraid. Maybe
I’m
alone in feeling a little
disappointed when the crazies do finally come out; or when that lone survivor
meets others like him and sets about rebuilding their version of civilization.
For me, no monster — human or otherwise — can ever match that initial skewed
perspective; that wonder that is part adolescent fantasy and part innate
terror.

I believe that. Maybe you don’t. But
one thing we probably can agree on is that we all need hope. Even if it’s
lying. And we all need someone. Even if it’s just a voice in our head. No more
than that.

Newfound Gap

Lee Clark Zumpe

JOURNAL ENTRY, MONDAY, SEPT. 4,
0001 AE:

Five weeks since last airplane
spotted flying overhead — pretty sure that it was military, heading southeast,
probably to Charleston Air Force Base. It’s been two weeks since the last sign
of traffic along US 441, heading north out of Cherokee towards Gatlinburg. I’m
running low on packaged food but there’s plenty of game to make up for that. It
rains daily: The storms move north out of the Gulf of Mexico. Tropical activity
should peak in the next few weeks. Last night, the skies to the east glowed
red. This morning I saw smoke lingering low on the horizon. I think Asheville
may be burning.

JOURNAL ENTRY, SATURDAY, OCT. 14,
0001 AE:

Winter will come early. Temperatures
have been falling steadily at night and I expect to see snow next week.
Tomorrow I hike over to the road, just in case. It’s been too long. I
don’t
expect to see anyone, really; but making the trip every week gives me something
to look forward to.

****

Everyone Ethan knew was dead.

Friends, family, co-workers — all
dead. Distant relatives living all over the country, all over the world;
acquaintances he had made online, in chat rooms; sons and daughters and wives
and husbands of former school friends — all dead to the best of his knowledge.

“
Told you
the place was deserted.” Lamar walked down the middle of the road, eyeing the
vacated tourist shops and art galleries. His boots shuffled across the
pavement, his long black coat billowed in the breeze. Normally, Gatlinburg
would be teaming with vacationers drawn by the changing seasons and the
colorful autumn leaves. “It’s been a ghost town for months, just like Pigeon
Forge, just like Sevierville and every other town I’ve been through.”

“
There must
be someone…” Ethan glanced at a newspaper resting in the gutter. The headline
simply read PLAGUE.

He missed Hannah the most, of
course. Though their intimacy had never evolved into a more permanent romantic
attachment, he considered her the closest thing he had to a partner. They
shared secrets, complained about the world in general as if kindred spirits. He
confided in her, confessed both his fears and his weaknesses.

He missed his brother, too, and his
bowling partners and the elderly lady who lived down the hall and the guy at
the gas station on the corner. He missed hearing music on the radio in the car.
He missed the group of kids that played football in the vacant lot by the
grocery store.

“
I’ve been
getting supplies here,” Lamar said, pointing his walking stick at a nearby
market. “Door was wide open when I showed up. There was a rotted corpse in
back. I hauled it out and left it next to the dumpster.” In his fifties, Lamar
had managed to survive in the midst of metropolitan Atlanta. He had lived in
the house his father had built half a century earlier, during the height of the
Cold War. Lamar spent months underground in an old fallout shelter, rationing
his food and monitoring the demise of civilization on shortwave radio. “There’s
still plenty of bottled water and canned food in here. We should stock up
before we head north.”

Following a late season hurricane
that devastated much of the Carolina shoreline, Ethan had relocated to the
mountains of western North Carolina, leaving behind his beloved ancestral home
in downtown Southport. Nothing really remained of the coastal town — a
thirty-foot storm surge had obliterated most buildings, scattering debris
through the tangled lowlands of the Green Swamp or washing them back to sea as
the wall of water receded.

He shared a FEMA trailer with
several other single men for a few weeks. Once he had managed to liquidate his
assets, he paid cash and rented a vacation chateau outside Maggie Valley. In
those last days, watching the news became an obsession for some; bleak images
played out while monotone news anchors read what would become an epitaph for a
nation. Every day seemed to bring another upheaval and new tales of tragedy.

When word of the plagues came, Ethan
reluctantly abandoned the comforts of civilization and headed into the
wilderness. A trilogy of epidemics arrived to trounce humanity, causing
excruciating deaths in city after city across the globe. And it was all done by
terrorists.

He settled in an abandoned cabin
built by the Civilian Conservation Corps deep in the heart of the Smoky
Mountains. Situated along a spur connecting to the Appalachian Trail, the place
had long been frequented by hikers and was by no means a secret. Ethan expected
others to join him, woke up daily expecting to see another survivor staggering
up the mountainside eyeing the ribbon of smoke spilling from the chimney.

None came.

Beginning in July, he hiked to
Newfound Gap weekly. He had once told Hannah to look for him there should
anything happen to separate them — in reality, it was more a joke than a plan:
He teased her that if bill collectors became too demanding or litigious, he
would have to stage his own death.

Like everyone else born in the
second half of the 20th century, when confrontational superpowers waged an
unending war of words bolstered by enough nuclear warheads to reduce the planet
to a smoldering cinder, Ethan had dreamed of a global holocaust. Though he had
imagined end-of-the-world scenarios, he never really expected any of his wild,
apocalyptic nightmares to unfold. Unlike his recent acquaintance Lamar, he was
no survivalist. He simply knew how to effectively remove himself from society —
and he had good enough sense to know when it was time to leave.

“
Ethan,”
Lamar called to him from the market. “Hey, Ethan — what do you want for lunch?”

“
Not
hungry.” Ethan shambled along the sidewalk, peering through store windows. Some
windows had been shattered, merchandise strewn across the floor inside the
shop. Looters had carried off goods after law enforcement failed, too
short-sighted to realize they would have little time to enjoy the acquisitions.
“I’d like to go ahead and find a couple vehicles.”

He had found Lamar at Newfound Gap.
Actually, Lamar found him. Ethan had left notes posted on the wall of the
Rockefeller Memorial in hopes of reuniting with Hannah. The notes read:

Hannah: I’m alive. Wait for me here.
Build a fire if you can — I’ll see the smoke. I’ll be back in less than seven
days. I miss you. Ethan.

Lamar found the note and waited four
days for Ethan to return.

“
We’ll find
something at that dealership I told you about in Sevierville.” Lamar emerged
from the market with pockets packed. He carried a bottle of water in one hand
and several packs of beef jerky in the other. “We’ve got a long haul ahead of
us. You should grab some grub, boy.”

Although Ethan was a good 25 years
younger than Lamar, he still winced at being called ‘boy’.

“
I’ll get
something later. No sense leaving ‘til morning,” Ethan said, watching as the
sun drifted low over the ridge embracing the city. “I’d like to clean up, get a
good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed.”

“
Sure, sure.
There are plenty of vacant hotel rooms. But the service at the restaurants is
lousy.” Lamar caught up with Ethan and handed him a bottle of water. “Drink
something at least. We’ll hunker down for the night and head out in the
morning, just in case your girlfriend shows up. We’d see the smoke from here, I
reckon.”

“
Yeah,” he
nodded. He looked over his shoulder to the southeast, back toward Mount LeConte
and Newfound Gap. “I know it’s crazy to think she’s still out there. It’s just
hard for me to convince myself I won’t see her again.”

“
You never
know. We might find her out west.”

Lamar had convinced Ethan to join
him in a cross-country trek. Someone else had been up on Newfound Gap recently;
and, like Ethan, they had left a message. The mystery survivors provided no
indication of their identity, no note to specify their point of origin or the
number travelling in their party. They left a road map, highlighting their
destination — like a beacon for stragglers, a welcome objective for the
vestiges of humanity.

The map pointed them toward Grants
Pass, Oregon.

JOURNAL ENTRY, TUESDAY, OCT. 17,
0001 AE:

Goodbye, Gatlinburg. Goodbye,
Newfound Gap. Goodbye, Hannah.

JOURNAL ENTRY, THURSDAY, OCT. 19,
0001 AE:

Spent today exploring Nashville. We
arrived just before dawn and Lamar
thought he saw lights in one
of the buildings downtown. We searched for hours but found no one. The smell is
awful — sewage, bodies, rotten food. One thing Nashville is not, though, is
dead. There are packs of wild dogs, feral cats and rodents everywhere. Lamar
had to kill a dog that came after him in a store. If he hadn’t been fast enough,
he’d probably be dead. We’ll be more careful.

****

Ethan, driving a late model SUV
filled with supplies, watched Lamar in his rear-view mirror. Trailing him on
the Interstate, his companion had appropriated an ambulance in St. Louis.
Filled with pharmaceuticals and life-saving equipment, Lamar had picked it up
outside a hospital emergency room, keys in the ignition and gas tank filled. He
even found sodas floating in stagnant water in a portable cooler.

A mile separated them as they raced
toward the setting sun.

“
How are you
doing, Theresa?”

“
I want to
go home,” the young woman said, her gaze focused on the passing pavement. “I
want to go home and see David.”

“
David isn’t
there anymore, Theresa.” They had found her wandering around a shopping mall in
St. Louis, dehydrated, emaciated and gibbering incoherently. The 29-year-old
woman tried to elude them initially, panicking at the sight of strangers and
screaming as she fled down the mall’s central corridor. They caught up with her
in a darkened department store, convinced her they meant her no harm. “You
remember, we went to the house to get him, but he was dead. We buried him in
the backyard.”

“
David is my
friend,” she said, choking back tears. Whether her delicate mental state
existed prior to or resulted from the end of the world did not really matter.
They could not leave her to die. So they adopted her. “When will we stop?”

“
Pretty
soon,” Ethan said. He preferred to stay off the road at night. He did not want
to chance falling asleep at the wheel, particularly with a passenger. “Are you
getting tired?”

“
Little bit.
Where did everyone go?” Theresa noticed a number of cars parked along the road;
shadowy figures slumped over steering wheels or huddled in bony heaps in the
weedy scrub. Ethan had already grown used to seeing carcasses, so much so that
even the most grisly display of human mortality scarcely fazed him. “Why did
they go away?”

“
Well,”
Ethan looked at her, trying to find the right words to make the situation
clear, trying to summon up a suitable explanation that would not simply serve
to inflate her confusion. “Did anyone tell you about the plague when it first
happened — about people getting very sick? Lots of people?”

“
David said
it was a virus. He said it was like a cold, only worse.”

“
That’s right
— it was a virus. Actually, several different ones, all at once.” Ethan
remembered the last few days he had lingered in Maggie Valley, watching as the
horror spread like wildfire, burning through the population. Governments vowed
to contain it, scientists frantically tried to calm the masses. Cities were
quarantined. Bulldozers pushed the dead into vast landfills where flames
consumed their diseased bodies. Fires burned incessantly, smoke blackened the
skies. Seeing no reason to share such unpleasant memories, Ethan tried to
change the subject. “Did you have a family? Parents?”

“
Everyone
has parents,” she snapped. “Mine couldn’t take care of me and let me go when I
was little. I don’t remember them.” Theresa turned toward Ethan, a look of
sudden puzzlement in her eyes. “Are they dead now, too?”

“
Probably,”
Ethan nodded. “There are very few people left, Theresa. Very few.”

Ethan momentarily turned his
attention to a fast-approaching road sign. In another thirty minutes, they
would be in Kansas City. Ethan flashed the interior lights a few times to catch
Lamar’s attention. “Ever been to Kansas City?”

“
No.”

“
Well, looks
like we’ll be staying there tonight.”

“
Okay.”

Twilight finally caught up with
them. As they continued, the land on either side of Interstate 70 blossomed
with housing developments, apartment buildings, shopping plazas and tall
offices. They slowed to a crawl when they neared the city limits, finding the
roadway littered with abandoned vehicles of every make and model. Weaving
through the maze of cars, vans, buses and trucks, Ethan paused and waited for
Lamar to catch up.