Revelations

By Christopher Mitchell

Chapter One: Pestilence

Samuel watched the flames dance in their meager campfire. It reminded him of a mother, once engulfed in orange tongues of stifling heat. In his mind, he heard her screams, hands rhythmic–like drums–thrashing violently at the flames that sought to consume her flesh.

Shrill fumes burned his eyes and filled their refuge with blinding smoke. It was nothing more than a small stone hollow, but it was dry. It had been carved smooth by centuries of wind and rain and sleet and snow, with a sparse entanglement of fir and kudzu to obscure the temporary sanctuary from prying eyes.

Eyes hungry for their provisions… killing to live, just as they did.

Samuel cursed Thomas for using wet wood, the stench of rotting pine going unnoticed by those behind him; those ghosts that looked on with guilt… mirroring his guilt. He ignored those dead, judging eyes, and focused on warming his hands in the radiant heat of her pain, listening to the open scream of pure agony only he could hear.

A Plague and an EMP.

That was all it took to wipe out one of the strongest nations in the world, catapulting them all back to the Stone Age to live like animals once again in this newfound wasteland.

Contraction meant death. No hope, no thoughts of salvation from a benevolent god. Just the finality of passing, and the sobs of family members behind fifteen millimeters of plastic sheeting.

Samuel coughed, fanning the smoke toward the opening in the hollow, smelling the stink of burning flesh interwoven with fir. It made him think of crematoriums, which now permeated every nook and cranny of their once proud nation. Now, a deep lungful of morning air coalesced with the lingering ash and cinders of corpses. The fine particles from mortuary chimneys got everywhere, so that even a sip of coffee harbored the remnants of someone’s mother.

Enemies and allies alike protected their own borders; no one in or out, native or non-native. Soldiers in biological protection suits stood like proud sentinels, keeping the Huns at bay with force of water, electricity, firepower, and flame. Samuel witnessed a mother and her baby being burned alive. The pleas for the mother to stop–to keep back, to halt, that he wasn’t afraid to…

Ignored. Her natural instincts to save her baby overrode her fear of death.

The child had been dead for days; mom had chosen suicide by fire.

Better that than living the quiet inevitability of slow demise.

Then, the EMPs came.

Samuel saw sunlight at three in the morning. Alarms, sirens… then black.

All black, cast back into the void where they belonged.

Defending soldiers transitioned to wardens, and the American people were cordoned off from the rest of humanity. Communities banded together to make small pockets of hope in the despotic wastelands, pooling their resources, hoping to make America great again.

Then, natural leadership became infected with another virus of its own.

They were panicked sheep in the guise of sheepdogs, once charged to protect their flock and caught fleeing in the night, carrying carts of community provisions in their haste. They hoped to get away before their absence was noticed by those who trusted them.

They didn’t.

Once peaceable neighbors now slit throats in the middle of the night, pillaging the sparse remnants of canned beans or moldy flour in derelict pantries. HOA cultists condemned whole families to burn in their homes when their children showed signs of infection. Samuel still heard their chaotic protests. The banging of doors and windows from the inside. The screaming. He remembered fear, paranoia, and manipulation coming to rule the home of the brave.

He witnessed the deconstruction of a nation, reverted now to a bog of bondage.

Samuel closed his eyes against the whirlwind of voices. He hummed loudly, frantically, to stifle the hysterical pleas of a family begging to be released from their homes. He hummed louder to choke out the screams, covering his mouth and nose as the fire of his memory smoked and smoldered. The heat of their campfire was a time machine, determined to destroy his sanity while dozens looked on, not a soul rebelling against the barbarity of the moment. So much smoke…choking and angry. Memories became a cankerous rancor, then pain and hate and self-loathing.

“Hey.” 

Concern, fear, and timidity… shining out from shifty cow eyes, breaking through Samuel’s maddening descent. Thomas carried a bundle of kindling in sickly white arms, cheeks crimson from exertion, breathing heavily. The thinning strands of his sandy gray hair hung in clumps against his shoulders, large patches missing over psoriasis lesions. His shoulders drooped in a practiced cowardice, disarming everyone but those who knew him best.

Watery eyes said he’d seen Samuel’s disintegration.

Samuel played aloof and continued twisting at the splinter of Fir he’d fancied for the past half hour. “Hey.”

“I got some firewood.”

“I can see that.” Samuel seethed behind a forced smile. Water fell in tattle-tale droplets from the small helping of wood; barely enough to keep the fire going through midnight. Once again, he’d have to sneak out while Thomas slept to get more.

“Should keep us going for a while, right?” Thomas waited for Samuel’s praise, craving it like the gnawing hunger of a heroin addict.

Samuel bit back the revulsion he felt at that festering need. “It should. You did good, big brother. Nice work.”

His stomach knotted in tandem with Thomas’ sudden glow. Samuel turned back to the fire, ready to cast himself in it. That would be better than hearing his mother beg him to keep Thomas safe. Her demands that Samuel watch out for him in this new world. A kid barely old enough for college; forced to keep an aging brother safe from thieves and raiding parties.

What a brave new world.

“Can we talk now?” Thomas dropped the bundle of wet sticks in the corner of their small base camp, sending thumb-thick cords rolling about wantonly.

“There’s nothing to discuss.” Samuel’s twig split, and he tossed the smaller end into the fire, finding a new place further down to twist.

“But what you’re planning…” Thomas trailed off, mesmerized by the smoldering fire, distracted from his worries and stoking Samuel’s ire once again.

“Hey Superdude.” Samuel gently used an old favorite to dig his charge out of his introverted reverie.

“Sorry,” Thomas shook himself, then continued. “I still don’t think we should go.”

“We’re running out of options. How much do we have left in the bag?”

Thomas rifled through the pack to inspect their provisions. “Maybe a day? Two, if we stretch it. You’re giving me too much.”

“And you’re eating too little, big brother.”

Wide, wet eyes, full of sorrow and pleading. Samuel couldn’t stand to look at them. He prodded and blew at the embers of the fire, hoping to rekindle the screams of the dying mother. Anything over those eyes.

“We’re not going.” Thomas lifted one of the scattered sticks and waved it about like a sword master from their childhood stories.

Samuel wasn’t sure when they’d switched roles, from squire to knight, but he never let on that he’d usurped his brother’s mantle. Instead, he asked questions, using the rudder of riddles to steer the conversation over hooks and rapids. “What other choice do we have?”

“We stay on the road; we stay Sammy and Superdude and keep finding adventures.”

“The meat in that pot over there,” Samuel pointed accusatorily, “is from a carcass we ran across five days ago. And there’s no telling how long it was dead before we found it.”

Thomas grimaced, a blend of revulsion and recognition at a scored hit. He pivoted. “So, we head west like we talked about; we take some of the land for ourselves and we farm it.”

“Are you a farmer?” Samuel saw the direction this was going.

Thomas shifted uneasily. “Well, no.” He cast his eyes back to the fire. Wet eyes would start wars.

“Then it appears that’s our only other option.”

“No.” His Brother looked back up, and the arms race began.

“Don’t you start, Thomas.”

“Sam, please.”

“I told you yesterday, I told you last week, I told you when you presented the idea that it was out of the question!”

“Sammy, if you’d just list—”

“Sam!”

Thomas held worried hands up, cowardice diffusing the tension of the moment. He disliked Samuel’s insistence on the grown-up version of his name, and Samuel bit the corner of his tongue as punishment; Thomas forgot things, and you couldn’t hold it against him.

“Sorry,” he continued. “Sam… I know you don’t like the option, but what other choice do we have?”

“We go to the Refuge.” Samuel’s temper poked at the fire, shoving and cajoling the wet logs into submission, bending their heat to his will.

“We can’t risk it. They’ll kill you.”

And there it was. The problematic crux to every plot in this plan.

“We don’t know that.”

“Have you heard any rumors of other survivors?”

“We’ve barely seen four people in the past six months, big brother; we aren’t exactly up to speed on current events.”

“Then we have to operate under the pretense they’ll take you. And then where would you be?”

“You mean ‘where would you be’.” It was silent, almost a whisper, but Samuel may as well have screamed it.

“I can do more!” Cow eyes, encountering the matador, watching the waving red flag. It was an uncommon emotion for his simple sibling.

“No.” Samuel rolled his eyes and sighed “You can’t. You can barely find a handful of wet sticks in daylight.”

“That’s all I could find near our campsite! I was worried I’d get lost.” Back to wet cow eyes. Sneaky, wet, cow eyes.

Samuel, above everything, despised weaponized incompetence.

“Get some sleep, Thomas.” He turned his back to his big brother and continued prodding at the fire. He poked and stabbed at it, transferring his loathing to a tangible outlet, until Thomas stopped rustling under his bedroll and the mother’s screams picked up again, filling the hollow with her agonized lullaby.

Chapter Two: Famine

Samuel marked his territory over the coals of their campfire, showering gold over red crags, anticipating the sizzling steam as his stream splashed the burnished dead fir.

Thomas shoved their meager belongings haphazardly into a pack they took turns carrying. He stopped mid-roll, forsaking their father’s army-green wool blanket–his favorite blanket–in favor of the view. It was a sunrise of roses and citrus, kissing the rolling Appalachian foothills with the tenderness of a brothel madame, bringing light in a place of darkness, promising peace in a realm of chaos… all the while harboring the clairvoyant knowledge that this newfound light might spell disaster for the knob-kneed fawn, it’s presence now seen where darkness once kept it hidden from dark-dulled eyes.

Samuel was a connoisseur of memories. He recognized when a moment was meant to be captured, like lightning bugs in jars, warm summer nights of sweet reminiscence, kept in isolation for future evaluation. So, he took his brother’s lead and watched the sphere of pure fire radiate white-hot heat, painting the pine-covered mounds in varying shades of blue, purple, and grey.

The morning view and warm sun cascaded Samuel backward in time, to their mother’s obsession with a famous artist on public television, reminding the viewer that mistakes were nothing more than happy accidents. He would say this, and she would squeeze Thomas tight, always beside her on the couch, and Samuel would long for that sensation–could almost feel it–until she would look in his direction. They were the eyes of secrets, of hidden riddles and sedition. They saw more than Samuel liked, and he would hide…

From her, from himself.

Samuel took the pack from his brother, throwing it in a wide arc over his shoulders. Samuel guessed, based on the terrain, that they were somewhere near Stone Mountain. But he was no woodsman–he honestly wouldn’t know the difference between Stone Mountain and Magic Mountain.

“Let’s head out.”

“You got it, Sammy— I mean Sam!”

Samuel choked back annoyance- it was too early for it. Instead, he set out southwest; toward Atlanta, where the refuge waited. They trudged over foothills, cutting paths through thick overgrowth to avoid main roads. Goons patrolled the crumbling asphalt highways. Snatching baubles, taking daughter brides from families. Looking, in their own way, for a sliver of peace in this despotic landscape. Those more desperate stalked the trails and dirt roads of America, leaving no one alive when paths crossed.

Eating the young… taking the boys…

“Can we continue our conversation from yesterday?” Thomas appeared beside Samuel, disrupting his reverie.

“That conversation is over.” Samuel said it with finality.

Thomas willfully ignored it. “But we never decided—”

“I decided last night.” Samuel held a hand up, not breaking stride. “While you were sleeping…”He stopped in a small crop of Ash trees ahead of them, then faced his brother. “…and while I continued to gather firewood that you failed to provide last night, I realized that this is our only course of action. We’re going to the refuge: end of story.”

“But they’ll kill you!”

“You don’t have ch—”

The sharp sound of a snapping stick from the brush nearby halted Samuel’s reprimands. He held a finger to his lips and gestured for his brother to hide in the denser scrub brush. Thomas was useless in a fight and got in the way more than he helped.

He was, however, good for cleanup details; slitting throats or jamming knives into an opponent’s soft flesh when they were incapacitated. So, Samuel kept him nearby in case of emergency.

“Stay there,” he said to his older brother “Don’t come out unless I tell you to.”

Thomas nodded–or at least Samuel thought he did; he could barely make him out in the brush.

Samuel set his attention on the spot where he sensed eyes. “You can come out now. There’s no point in an ambush.”

Three figures emerged from overgrowth, decorated in sticks and foliage to further obscure their pattern and shape from woodland prey. The figure in the middle stood a head taller and wider than his two flanking counterparts. Sporting a scruffy grey beard and a tuft of curly ash atop his head, the figure scratched at his neck and surveyed their prey, the emaciated figures beside him staring hungrily at Samuel’s pack.

“We didn’t expect you to be so civil.” Greybeard chuckled and eyed the surrounding wood line.

Samuel assumed he was looking for signs of a larger party, assessing the need to run or fight. He assumed this because he did this. Samuel finished his scan of the wood line, deduced the two stickmen next to Greybeard were the workhorses and he their muscle; no others belonged to their party.

“Well,” Samuel adjusted the pack on his shoulder, shifting its weight to his non-dominant side. “This isn’t my first highway robbery.”

“Then you’re aware of the terms and conditions of the exchange.” Greybeards’ lackey’s chuckled this time, ravenous, eyes glued to the pack.

Samuel shifted, assessing his opponent’s avenues of approach, attack patterns, and possible traps; just like his father had taught him. “I’m aware of them; I choose not to accept them.”

“Well, you see there…” Greybeard unslung a sledgehammer from his back, Husky emblazoned across the plastic handle. “… That could be a problem.”

The lackeys pulled two small shivs from their belts, evidently undeserving of better weapons; a sign Greybeard didn’t trust them.

Samuel thought of Thomas. “I expected it to be.” He unsheathed the small machete kept at his back. Over time, he’d polished the edge to a mirror finish, darkening the flat of the blade with fire and ash to minimize the glare. A dozen small holes lined the back of the blade, reducing its weight. He spun the blade, and the blade screamed, air passing through those small voids.

Banshee enjoyed her time out of her scabbard.

“Fair warning,” Samuel spun the screaming blade again “it’s been a while.”

“Wish I could say the same.” Greybeard seemed unfazed by Samuel’s brandishing, but his lackeys winced against Banshees’ howl.

Samuel sighed, looking at the blackened steel, dreading the next three minutes and the monster he’d become. Screams emanated from deep within the blade, souls it had consumed since becoming a weapon of war, no longer wielded to go on adventures and play pirates, but to cut the hearts from humanity and distance himself further from the boundaries of civility.

“Last chance: we don’t have much to take… we can all walk away from this.”

“We?” Greybeard looked around again, confused. He hadn’t noticed Thomas.

Samuel kicked himself for losing the upper hand. He dropped his pack, regaining the attention of the raiders, then positioned himself before Greybeard could overthink it, waving the group forward to start the dance.

“Let’s move this along. I have shit to do.”

They all advanced, both lackeys moving into Samuel’s peripheral vision, hoping to catch him off guard. Greybeard spun the sledgehammer like a top in between his hands, teeth bared in a sinister smile. Those yellowed and decaying caps said they would eat well tonight–that Samuel and his hidden companion would keep them strong for weeks.

The goon to Samuel’s left lunged with unsure footing, slashing carelessly while trying to avoid his blade.

Samuel sidestepped and held his foot out.

The goon stumbled over it; the momentum of the goon’s charge sent him wildly into his partner, impaling him with the tiny blade. With a subsequent slash, Samuel left a streaking crevice in the nape of the left goon’s neck. A geyser of crimson, and Samuel shifted again, sinking his blade into right goon, Banshee cozying up beside left goon’s still implanted one.

Eyes- blue and bewildered, opened wide, stark against the red flashes of death- said that Greybeard had underestimated his opponent.

With a flash of fury, wildly questing for purchase against Samuel’s chest with this large sledgehammer, Greybeard swung. Samuel ducked the momentum of the swing and rolled behind Greybeard, slicing at his heels. He felt the blade tug, heard the pop of tendons, and Greybeard crumpled. Samuel shuddered, memories of a dead father flashing through his mind. He let him scream for a few seconds, let him bask in his fate, bask in the last few moments on this side of life, where he’d lived like a king amongst a land of beggars.

All hail the king.

Samuel held the blade to Greybeard’s throat, and his agonized cries turned to simpering whimpers.

“Told you it’s been a while. Now, where’s the refuge?”

“The… what?”

Samuel pressed the edge of his machete into Greybeard’s neck, a small bead of scarlet blending with the blood of left and right, and Greybeard moaned.

“That way!”

His voice was pure, dissonant music, distilled to an elixir of terror and fear. Samuel bottled it like spring water. He followed the fingers to a large mountain in the distance.

“The other side of that mountain! You’ll see it, due west!”

The blubbering started, and Samuel groaned. He was hoping for a little more information before this happened.

“P-Please! I don’t wanna die!”

“Neither did I.”

He pressed the blade hard into Greybeard’s neck, sending sanguine rivulets in streams of hot, fire-engine red along his blade. He imagined she hungered for it, like a twisted, rotten amalgamation of the old banshee myth, soothsayer of death, and a devourer of life. Greybeard gurgled, sobbing, flailing his arms and legs, beating against Samuel, fighting futility to the end. At last- and, as always, longer than Samuel found comfortable- Greybeard’s death throes ceased, and the woods around him stilled. Warbling thrushes and the bustling, energetic squirrels halted their morning proclivities, a silent homage to fellow prey, and the chattering picked up against the rustling of wind over chlorophyll. Samuel huffed; he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“Check the wood line for their packs.”

He was already rifling through Greybeard’s pockets, making an inventory of their newly acquired supplies, assessing what would come along, and what would get buried with the corpses, when Thomas darted to the dead trio’s point of ingress. He’d seen an overturned hickory a couple of hills back, the trunk hollow from termites. He and Thomas would stuff them below the root ball and drop the trunk back over the upturned soil. No one, not even a group these corpses may call friends, would find them.

Thomas returned with three packs, each showing signs of wear; an object long carried, and long treasured. Samuel ordered Thomas to dump the contents of each in a pile beside him, then had him withdraw a long, thin knife they kept in the pack. Thomas knew what to do. Samuel raised himself, Greybeard’s pockets now empty, and moved over to mirror his previous actions on Greybeard’s counterparts. Samuel tried, unsuccessfully, to drown out the noises behind him as he pilfered the dead; the sounds of tearing fabric, the downward friction of cloth removed from skin, the rinsing of the flesh, fingers following the contours of the body’s anatomical landmarks, then, stripping the flesh from the bone, going after the thighs, where the meat is the most plentiful.

He could see the movements in his mind as he absently picked through the pockets of each goon. Thomas gingerly worked along the femoral artery, like their father taught them, to harvest sustenance, maximize their bounty, and fill their bellies with the succulent meat of captured prey. Samuel carried the flotsam from the goon’s pockets to the larger pile and sifted for essentials, forsaking the trinkets and baubles of wayward souls, attempting to find meaning amongst the refuse around them.

“We leave in ten.”

 Chapter Three: War

Samuel watched the immolated mother blow radiant heat over the thin strips of meat. Juices dripped in a coke can nestled within the fire, the sizzle of oil on hot tin, blending with the pops and crackles of pine. He pulled at the smoke, bathing in it, baptizing himself in its odorous wash. He longed for the cleansing relief it might bring, hoping for salvation against his sins, but he clung neither to relief nor hope. Those had died in the home he was born in.

Thomas felt a piece of the meat, squeezing its center, analyzing the juices on his thumb and forefinger, assessing edibility. Samuel knew Thomas had no idea what he was doing, so the rubbing of his fingers stood out comically against the backdrop of his narrow-eyed concentration. Thomas jumped, Samuel’s cackling harsh against the silence of dusk.

“Is it ready yet?”

Samuel’s smile widened; wet cow eyes now shifted, scrupulous.

“It needs another half-hour or so.”

“Ok, Superdude.”

Thomas flipped their makeshift spit, the bubbling juices atop the strips of flesh plummeting into the fire, stoking the immolated mother’s rage, and she bared her teeth at Samuel’s brother.

“Careful,” Samuel tensed, ready to cast a hand into the fire. “We’ll need that oil.”

“For what?”

“You know for what.”

Banshee cooed in her sheath; she would be rewarded well for her work today.

Thomas apologized, then set about solving the Rubik’s cube they’d commandeered with the rest of Greybeard’s possessions. It was the only toy amongst their packs, so naturally Samantha Delano’s eldest son had instantly taken to it. Samuel had balked, had halted his sifting through the pile of goods, when a poorly drawn caricature of a dog–in skill and design reminiscent of a child’s–sent pangs of guilt coursing through his soul. He pulled at the cords of smoke lazily dancing about the flames, in vanity, hoping to purify his soul.

“We should reach the refuge by noon tomorrow.”

“Do we have to?”

Samuel stopped his bath.

“Enough, big brother, don’t start this again.”

“I still think we have a better shot out here, is all!”

Samuel exploded from the stump he’d taken as a stool, shocking his brother into submissive silence.

“We are waiting.” Samuel chose his words carefully, precisely, ensuring each word cut like knives. “For the meat of a human being to finish cooking over our small fire. We have been on the road for almost a year now, with no hope, no direction, and no means of survival- other than off the scraps of other dead humans from which we scavenge.”

He leaned close, staring into wet, cow eyes, and plucked the Rubik’s cube from Thomas’ fingers.

“We have become monsters, Thomas. Our mother and father would weep if they could see what we’ve become.”

Samuel waited, letting the words twist Thomas’s insides.

“Except they can’t weep, can they, Thomas?”

“Don’t.”

“Why can’t they weep, Thomas?”

“Please, don’t.”

“Answer me, Thomas. Why do our parents, who loved you more than they ever loved me,” his voice was loud, sharp, piercing, “why do they not weep at our fate? Why do they sit, silent, staring at us from the depths of our memory, unable to speak, unable to breathe, unable to feel what we have felt over these nearly three hundred and sixty-five days?”

Thomas was lost in the fire. He saw the immolated mother, her eyes accusatory.

Hateful.

He shook his head, wearing a mask of pain over wet, cow eyes.

“ANSWER ME!”

Samuel shook. In anger, in wrath…

In anticipation.

“Because I killed them.”

“Why.”

“Because I didn’t want to see them suffer.”

Thomas trembled, and Samuel cast the cube into the flames.

“You don’t deserve happiness.”

He turned and walked to his bedroll, the hollow moans and apologies dripping from the wet stick he called a brother, casting themselves pitilessly into the fire.

Chapter Four: Death

The immolated mother danced. Thomas’ lullabies called her softly to movement until, under the weight of her own peace, she drifted away, leaping from the embers and into the air of night. No longer in pain, she rode the winds as a respite of smoke, dancing free and uncaring on the lilac-scented breeze, watching the transition from stark, moonlit night to the golden cloak of a cool, Georgia morning. She drank in its majesty, full of hope, full of peace. Then Samuel dispelled her misty form with a wave of his hand, shrieking his brother’s name into the wilderness, finally releasing her from his torment forever.

Samuel cried out once again to the god of the mountain, cursing his brother, hurling threats and obscenities, begging. It wasn’t the first time Thomas had wandered too far, though. In fact, this was his way. He would sulk, ruminate on Samuel’s words, then Samuel would coerce him back in with sweet promises of sights unseen and adventures undiscovered. Then it was Sammy and Superdude again.

Now, however, there were no signs of his brother’s wandering, no hints of where he could have gone. He had covered his tracks out of the encampment, and Samuel cursed himself for teaching his brother how to mask his footprints so well. He had clover-leafed the perimeter four times already- going in small concentric circles ever outward- hoping to find him. No sound, no broken twigs or scuffed bark, not a single lock of Thomas’ sickly gray hair, could be found anywhere.

He fell to his knees, looking at the logs of the fire, light brown and pocked with small pits of angry char, and hoped to see the immolated mother somewhere in the flames.

He didn’t want to be alone.

The embers glowed; faint and warm but wanting.

No screams, no whispering judgements.

Silence.

He didn’t remember leaving the campsite. Sometime during the submersion into his memories, examining how he’d treated his brother, how he’d harbored some of the same guilt that Superdude carried, Samuel found his feet moving of their own accord, westward, toward Atlanta. He neither ate nor rested, afraid of stopping, letting his legs outrun his fears. About Thomas. About himself. And eventually found his fraying tennis shoes awash in darkness, gently splashed with the yellow tint of artificial light. He shielded his eyes against the deluge of Apollo’s pale imitation, making out the faint contours of a shield wall, wearing a garland of intermingling Christmas lights and barbed wire.

It was true; the stories were true.

He let his eyes adjust to that radiant sun god, reaching out to touch the strands of wire, to let his hands run along the cold steel, over warm bulbs, when a shout from his left took his attention from the beautiful savagery. He instinctively raised hands high above his head, falling to his knees to pose in the least threatening manner possible.

“Please don’t shoot! I’m not a threat!”

Samuel saw men in bio suits, donned in their wide-eyed chemical masks, always surprised, with unfeeling rifles, and he continued.

“My name is Samuel Delano. I am from Evans, Georgia, and I am a survivor of Shaker’s Disease. I request food and shelter, and, in exchange, I give you my freedom.”

His cries were met with silence.

“Please?”

Nothing, only the first signs of rain, light pattering of condensate plummeting to the earth, tinkling like broken glass, answered his prayer. The world grew dim at the edges of his vision, and he recognized his body’s surrender to the day’s torture. Without food, without sleep, he had used up the meager reserves of strength he’d managed to store over these months of wandering. His final goal was met. Now at the feet of the monolith, he let his mind be consumed with black, and everything silenced.

Later, he squinted shocked eyes against the harsh beams of light that bathed his body in ochre. His hands were bound, and he resisted the urge to flee, to run, to keep whoever had him captive from doing ungodly things, taking pieces of him little by little, drawing out his misery. Then, with grim recollection, he remembered he’d wanted this. So, he slumped, resigned, back into the chair, ready to take on whatever lay ahead.

“Mr. Delano?”

The voice came from behind him, and the juxtaposition of light and sound made Samuel jump involuntarily.

“You’re not in here with me, are you?”

Samuel wanted to warn her, to shout that he had been infected, that he’d spiked a fever, and Thomas had barely been able to keep him alive. He needed to tell this faceless human, this fellow soul dancing in the flames of a ruined world, that he was a threat. His lips parted, then fear and panic were cleaved with the sharp cackle of laughter, reverberating from the walls in an unnatural staccato, its sound vulgar to Samuel’s ears. Profane mirth in the face of a rapture, end times candy coated in lilting giggles.

“I assure you, Mr. Delano, you and I are perfectly safe in this room together.”

The disembodied voice manifested into a woman with dark features, tightly woven curls spilling over gold-framed lenses. She looked matronly, short and built with the wide hips of a mother whose hands had cared and nurtured for her boys, loving them each equally and individually, and her appearance assuaged some of his earlier fears. This woman was harmless.

“I’m assuming then.” Samuel adjusted himself to appear slightly more dignified- though he recognized he more than likely neither smelled nor looked it “that I’m not the first person to walk through the gates as Lazarus.”

Grandmother smiled

“No. You are not.”

She sat opposite him, her chair now finished with the screeching howl of obstinate matter against matter, producing a manila folder, making Samuel think of a different time, when he’d been detained for driving his father’s old army jeep into the town hardware store. The brakes were shoddy at best, and his midnight joyride had given him his first taste of rebellion, immediately chased with a painful consequence that lingered on his tongue to this day. Thomas had helped him work off the damage, repairing the store, rebuilding the shelves from scratch, learning a trade in the process while praising a younger brother he thought the world of.

“No, Mr. Delano, you are one of several hundred who have stumbled through our gates, claiming to be ‘Lazarus’ as you so eloquently put it.”

Her voice was soft and high, in the key of C, the timbre of sanctuary hidden in the drawn-out a-h’s of her r’s, coming out “Mistah Delano” and lulling him back into the soft pillows of peace. She opened her manila folder, riffling through its secrets, memorizing the incantations of higher knowledge. Grandmother’s eyes leapt from the paper and pounced, snaring Samuel’s own before he could look away. He suddenly felt exposed, naked, and he longed for the voices he’d kept prisoner for so long, wishing to hear their cries over the whine slowly growing in his throat, a cornered dog with wet, feral eyes, penetrated by such pure, loving almond eyes as hers.

“Tell me, Mr. Delano, what did you experience in your travels after zero hour?”

Samuel told her. He told her everything in excruciating detail. The power going out, Samuel’s father raising a unified flag, bringing the neighborhood together to defend itself from external threats, of a brief respite, warm electric light against primitive darkness. Then Samuel had to discuss the hard parts, where the crops failed, neighboring communities sabotaging their growth to expand their territory, devolving incrementally into beasts, until their father had burned a mother alive, his demands that she turn back unheeded, a dead infants eyes staring hollow back at Samuel, still reeling from lockdown and quarantine, forced from school and higher education to witness his idol engulf a woman in heated petrol because she showed signs of contagion.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Delano.”

Grandmother was sincere, and she clasped his hands, coaxing the little boy from behind the man, letting him release the tidal wave of feelings he’d held for… too long. He teased about being a mess, and her soft laugh cut him from stem to stern, and he let the rest out, every last ounce of hate and rage and searing pain he’d encountered on the road, drawn from him like poison, that soft laugh, replacing the void with hope. Filling it with peace. He took a deep breath. Grandmother’s patient smile never wavering as the clock ticked by, second after second, and more, and he finished his story.

“When the supplies ran low, my father-the man who had fought in wars, who taught my brother and me that leadership meant never leaving men behind–threw my mother down the stairs, hoping the fall would kill her.”

He could hear their raised voices, mother shouting that he couldn’t do it, couldn’t leave them there to starve to death, the sound of skin striking skin, and then the cascade of flesh being torn and ravaged by coarse fabric patterned red over mahogany. The sickening thud of her head striking the banister meant she’d finally ended her routine, eagerly anticipating the roars of her youth as she dismounted the bars and gave a bow, in the heaven Samuel created for her in his mind. He breathed again.

“Abraham Delano fled after that, taking the neighborhood provisions, hoping to escape before he was caught and strung up by the mob he had called friends–to their faces–not an hour prior. I was left to try and help my mother, too scared to speak, to call out to her, to see if she was ok. Her leg was mangled, and her neck was off slightly, out of place. I left to call for help, and when I came back…”

Thomas’ hands wrapped around their mother’s throat, sobbing, squeezing the life from her, lips wet with tears and snot and spit as his mother’s eyes clouded, her eyes showing perfect 10’s, from every judge.

“She was gone.”

He sat in that memory, walking around the stilled frame, seeing Thomas’ sickly fingers digging into their mother’s soft skin, and it felt wrong somehow.

“Mr. Delano?”

He shook himself from that place, returning to the soft yellow lights of now.

“Sorry. After that, I chased my father down. He was predictable, headed toward the army base, hoping to trade his ill-gotten rations for refuge. When I finally caught him, we fought. At first with words…”

His father stood over him, rain soaking the ground, each coated in thick layers of mud like rooting pigs, breathing heavily, both exhausted from malnourishment. Samuel’s vision swam, trying to keep his focus on a father who called him a disappointment, a child that couldn’t be his, because this child lacked the vision and cold, calculated cunning required of an animal in this new world. Then, flashing from their peripherals and thundering hard into the side of their father came Thomas, screaming obscenities never uttered on this side of the universe. He was primal, feral, striking with the fury of a little boy who no longer felt the cold warmth of a mother’s touch. He quested for purchase, landing blow after blow against any bare spot of their father’s flesh he could find until finally, with hands still coated in the perfume of their mother,  the sweet, wonderous scent of roses and citrus, Thomas ensured that mother and father remained together forever, both in life, death, and its cause. His fingers found their home in his father’s neck, and he squeezed.

“Then we fought, and he didn’t make it.”

Samuel licked his lips, noticing how dry they were for the first time.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Delano.”

“We considered it a mercy. When the mob found the cart, the provisions were still there and accounted for… most of them, anyway. We watched them from the tree line as they butchered our father’s corpse and nailed him to a nearby tree. They carved “False” into his distended belly and cursed the day they’d ever listened to Abraham Delano.”

Grandmother’s furrowed brow pulled him once again from memory, gathering the pieces of their father, burying them next to the parts still bound to the tree, like some halfhearted attempt to let him cross to the other side whole.

“You’ve said ‘we ‘more than a few times during your story, Mr. Delano. It sounds like you had someone with you who made it more bearable.”

Samuel smiled, going into detail about Thomas. His older brother was the voice of reason in an unreasonable world. He helped him hold on to some semblance of humanity, and in exchange, Samuel ensured Superdude would never have to hurt anyone he didn’t want to ever again.

“Superdude?”

Samuel laughed at Grandmother’s question.

“I called him Superdude because when we were kids, he was my hero. He was full of love and light, and I idolized him. Did you know he used to sing? He sang in G, always in G, and he was never out of tune. He loved Greek mythology, could tell you every story and tragedy under the sun—”

“Mr. Delano?”

Grandmother’s brow lines now touched, and Samuel stiffened.

“What’s your brother’s name, Mr. Delano?”

“Why?”

She reached beneath the desk, and Samuel heard a faint click of plastic on plastic.

“We’ve noticed a trend amongst survivors, Mr. Delano; one where those who, with the right genetic conditions and stress activators, can experience a complete shift of mental balance when exposed to Shaker’s disease.”

Doors opened behind, and Samuel twisted, craning to see, his neck popping at the sudden motion as two soldiers in biohazard suits entered and flanked Grandmother.

“Tell me, Mr. Delano, is your brother’s name Thomas?”

Samuel felt the whine begin again at the back of his throat, this time unaccepting, unwilling to see.

“What do you want with my brother?”

“Mr. Delano, please.”

“What do you want with my brother, goddammit!”

“Mr. Delano, I need you to calm dow—”

“I will not calm down. I want to know what you want with my b—”

“Thomas!”

Grandmother’s fist scared the little boy who hid behind the man, its meaty weight coming down solid with a resounding clang against the metal table. Samuel jumped, and the walls he’d built to protect himself crumbled. Thomas’ hands becoming his hands, wilting roses, and turning citrus to rot. Thomas’ pain became his pain; taking the abuse Samuel bombarded himself with consistently, reminding himself that he was the cause of their grief, that he was his own villain, that there was no one else to blame for any of this but himself.

Thomas, with shifty cow eyes, looked up to Grandmother.

“Yes, Ma’am?”

End

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