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“The great blue swells have no mind to consider mercy. That envelope of ferocity will break you in it’s immensity but not out of spite or purpose. It will break you just because that’s what it does. Our ship was wasted upon, the wood cracked, the mast broken and yet we continued on.
Every night spent upon damp wood brought us closer to the golden eye. It became a symbol to us few. Salvation. I thank God that the lighthouse was still there as I’ve done every day since. We’d have been swallowed alive.”
Putting down the book Indifferent Gods Dan scanned the horizon from on-high through the scope of an old .38 hunting rifle. A silver-grey shroud of fog hid everything below from sight. As he pulled his eye away from the scope, golden rays stung his eyes. Morning once again.
Morning made him think of day. What day was it? It was too warm to be winter. Maybe sometime in July?
July used to mean joy, not just for him but for his clan. Cindy had always loved the beach, so Dan tried to bring it to her. The back of his truck had been filled with sand, which was then deposited on the deck in the back yard and raked. All it needed then was a beach chair and an umbrella. Oh how she’d laughed when she first saw that. Her eyes had shone.
Then the neighbourhood strays had taken to staying in it and using it as their personal litter box. Dan decided he’d just take her to the beach instead from then on.
Resting his mug of wetted grounds on the tower’s rail, Dan retreated down some stairs behind him. The stairs were rotten, and shifted beneath his every step like a viscous suspension of wood and jelly.
Dan stopped as he reached a floor crudely wrought from thin wood planks. He stretched a foot across a generous gap to reach the other side, refusing to look down.
On the other side, Dan reached into the faded duffle bag he’d first associated with Calvin. It’s earth-green material had matched his shirt. Calvin had always been reliable for a game of checkers. It’d been months since he’d played, not much fun to play against yourself.
He pulled a dirty cloth from within. Unwrapping it carefully, he counted the contents, although he knew how many there were. It was kind of like when you were broke at the end of the month and you kept counting the bills because you hoped you were wrong.
One blue-red-yellow tube remained. Of course, it shouldn’t surprise him. He counted two yesterday, and three the day before that, one was the next in the natural order. It didn’t feel like it’d been that long.
Bag in hand, Dan took a step towards the stairs when the plank beneath his feet shifted with a dry crackle. Flexing his legs, he threw himself away from the unsteady ground and landed heavily on the stairs, rolling and bumping into the rail.
The tower whined at the sudden shift in weight and then was still. Heart violent in his chest, Dan looked at the plank. It had cracked down the middle, and only his reflex to jump had saved him.
As he walked back up the stairs, Dan noticed that the fog was turning to steam as the sun rounded into form
He pulled a matchbox from the bag and slid it open. Several hundred redheads lay within. Dan selected one and struck it sharply against the flint sheet. With measured practice, he lit one of the fireworks and held it aimed to the North, eyes facing away. There was a sudden tug on his hand, a screech, and then a small boom. Pretty lights danced in the sky among the morning sun.
All done. Glancing at the book, he sighed and walked back down the stairs. It’s words had become worn from use, the cover wrinkled and bent.
Dan walked until he reached the break. Chunks of ash and charcoal turned his palms black as he ran his hand along the jagged cliff in the stairs.
He’d fallen asleep that night rifle nestled in his arms. The grey-blue quiet of dawn was shattered by a gargantuan crack. Lightning. Dan had jumped awake, eyes wild with fear. Black smoke filled the air in waves. Flames took the path of his escape. Orange-red tongues waggled ever closer to Dan, and in desperation, he’d stomped the stairs. Sparks flew up with every stomp in a tempest. His eyes, seared from the smoke, were reduced to slits. The heat became overwhelming. He brought his foot down on the cinders again and again until the flames fell below. Dan almost fell himself as the stairs gave and plummeted to the ground. Arms pin-wheeling frantically, wobbling at the top of the abyss, coughing harshly. When he regained his balance, he sat on the newly created precipice and looked down at the lush grass below where the fire lay crackling. It could’ve been another continent.
Dan thought of Calvin and Sarah and how much he missed them. If they’d been here when that’d happened, Calvin would have been all serious pragmatism. He’d have been sure there was a solution and maybe he’d have found one. Sarah would’ve just cried for awhile, trying to hide it from them. Then she’d have cheered up and spent the next week trying to make them both laugh. Those had been good days. Until Dan had gotten lucky and the others had left.
Calvin had climbed up from below that day and glanced around for Sarah. Satisfied she wasn’t listening, he leaned towards Dan.
“We’re running low on food.”
“We have enough.” Dan had assured him with a friendly smile.
Calvin shook his head. “Maybe for a month, two at most.”
“Well, we’ll worry about it then.”
Calvin shook his head again. “I can’t relax. Maybe it’s something in me, left over. Knowing we don’t have enough food to last us, it - We need to get more.”
They’d talked it through and it’d been decided. Two of them would go out and gather a large store of food.
“There’s a small stop just through the forest. They probably still have stuff left. Whoever goes will head to the truck we left behind, and use that to get there.”
They’d decided that drawing straws was the best way to pick who would go. Sarah had fashioned some straws and they’d drawn. Dan picked the longest, which meant he would stay at the tower.
“You lucky dog.” Calvin had joked when Dan’s was the largest.
“You’re gonna have to learn to make your own coffee now.” Sarah had joked.
That night they’d drank, laughed and made love. As Dan lay there, wrapped in their arms, he wondered whether he really had been the lucky one. They’d have each other at least.
“When we get back, we’ll have so much food, enough for years. There’ll be no worries, just good times with good people. We’ll be happy.” Pillow talk is always idyllic. But things are different when you aren’t lying next to someone, head’s touching, safe in each other’s presence.
They left the next day loaded with supplies and water. Dan used to have enough food to survive quite a while, but he was running low. “Shoot off one of these, every morning.” They’d told him as they tapped the box that held the fireworks, right before they left. “It’ll bring us back to you, if we get lost.”
Dan nodded and smiled. Back then, it seemed like it would work, when they were an arm’s length away. Now he wondered how they’d get back up even if they did return. They said they’d be back in a week. It’d been three months.
Leaning back against the tower’s rails, the entire thing creaked and shifted. It was very old, probably a bird watching station at some point but by now it was rotted through and arthritic.
It was as simple as a decision and Dan recognized that. The only thing was that some decisions are hard to make. He didn’t want to accept that they were dead because if he accepted that, he’d be accepting that he was alone. Still, a man can’t control anything outside himself. That’s one thing he remembered from his father. He’d repeated it like a mantra. Decisions are your power in this world, they only thing you control.
Dan wasn’t one to sit and wait for death. The facts were simple. They said they’d be back in a week, and it’d been months. There was food and water left, but not much. There were no stairs down anymore.
What if they did return? They’d find him gone and the tower’s stairs destroyed. What would they think? What if they could never find the tower again without him to guide them home?
Dan looked over the railing at the ground below. It was a long way down, too long to jump but perhaps he could dampen the fall.
Dan leaned over the East side of the tower. Down below was a spattering of rocks and logs, too risky. On the west side was a small river, running through the hills. Not ideal again, because of the rocks that jutted up like spikes. The south had a steep incline and thus was out of consideration. On the north side there was nothing but flat grass, and a few rocks but far less than any other side.
Decided, Dan walked quickly down the tower to the platform below, where he gathered the remaining food and water.
Walking to the south rail, he leaned back on it heavily, hearing it creak. Dan closed his eyes. “God if you do anything to rectify for what you’ve done to this world, let it be this. Let me live.”
Dan braced himself. He remembered standing on the high dive at the local pool as a kid. The others behind him had shouted for him to go and called him names. It was so hard to jump until your closed your eyes and went for it.
Dan sprinted to the North side of the tower and slammed into the railing. The tower groaned loudly and shifted a few feet. He sprinted back to the South side of the tower and slammed into the railing again, and again the tower groaned and shifted, but more than before. Dan repeated this process, gauging his progress by the sound of the tower.
After ten slams, Dan hit the south side hard, and after a long groan there was a loud crack like breaking bones. The tower’s top lurched and Dan fell to the floor only for it to stop it’s descent, suddenly, at an obtuse angle. There was another crack as he lay there, the tower’s top precariously hanging and Dan’s heart raced. A vat of water fell on it’s side and tumbled lazily towards the south rail and then hit. With a screech, the tower began moving again, towards the ground.
Dan couldn’t help but yell, his body held taut, as his view of the sky changed to a view of the landscape. Wind whipped past his face as his view was cranked upside down and the world rushed by. There was a jarring boom and Dan’s breath was snatched from his lungs as his chest collided hard with the rail. There was pain and then consuming darkness.
Dan’s eyes opened sloppily, pain shooting through his entire body. One eye wouldn’t open fully, his right. He lifted a hand to it and felt it was crusty. The first step for Dan was to sit up. Using both arms as crutches, he propped himself up, feeling splinters beneath his hands. Behind him lay the tower, or at least half of the tower.
It was getting dark which meant that night was coming, and Dan knew that meant he had to move. Still, there was something magical about the itchy grass beneath his palms after all this time. He marvelled at the touch of it, how something natural could be so soft, so moist. Alive.
Wincing with the effort, Dan propped himself up on one knee. While he was sore, and bleeding from a wound in his forehead, he’d not broken any bones. It did hurt to breathe, but he was alive. Thank you God he whispered in his mind.
There were two ways to go; down through the grasslands or into the forest. The others had gone through the forest, and Dan knew it was the best option. The grasslands were so open. Someone’d be seen from miles around.
Dan looked around for his rifle, but it was not in plain sight. He pulled a mess of boards and wood off the ground, and there it was. Lifting it in his hands, he checked it for damage. The barrel was luckily unbent, although the handle was seriously dented.
The box of ammo was a few feet north of it, and easier to find as the shells had scattered in the fall.
Dan entered the forest and weaved through trees looming like statues from another age. He hadn’t escaped as clearly from the fall as he’d thought. There was a sharp, deep pain in his heel. There was probably a hairline fracture in it, not that there was anyone left who could confirm or deny that.
There were no animals to be seen, although Dan knew they were around. They’d learned to avoid humans. Dan remembered his youth, before all of this, when his grandfather would take him through the woods behind the farm. There had been an entire kingdom of critters; birds, rodents, raccoons, deer and elk. They wouldn’t flaunt themselves but you could sense them. A rustling bush, a rabbit’s tail as it disappeared down a hole. Now there was nothing, just quiet. Anything left had learned well to avoid man.
Dan was unnerved by the sight of a strange tree ahead of him. It was lumpy, the trunk too thick in the front, but obscured by shadow. Carefully walking closer, Dan hoisted his rifle up and held it taut to his eye.
As his dark sight adjusted, the strange lumpy trunk became clearer. Dan’s grip of his rifle loosened and it fell to the ground. It was Sarah. Her eyes stared blankly down, and there was no terror on her face despite the fact she’d been stuck to the tree with a sharpened spear through the gut. There was frustration plain on her face, no doubt at this indifferent world intent on crushing each of us.
They were nearby.
There would be no tears shed for Sarah, not from Dan or anyone. Maybe Calvin shed a tear for her after he escaped. Certainly not in the midst of battle.
There was no feeling of sadness when someone died anymore. Dan remembered when he’d arrived at his grandparents house in Kelowna, north of the city. It was after the outbreak, everything had been insane but he’d been driven by love and naivety.
It was a cabin of massive oak trunks, stacked high and broad. The farm where he’d grown up holding frogs above puddles, and crying when the chickens he befriended were made into dinner.
Jerry, his grandfather, had been in his study, just like he always was. Packing his own cigarettes with rustles and clicks, bent over a crossword puzzle. Dan had approached slowly, not wanting to scare him.
“Hey.” He’d said as he opened the door with a creak. The man had swung around quicker than Dan had ever seen him move before. Forehead sunken in, a convex sheet of useless skin covering a void in his brain. Where the frontal lobe would have been. The letter “a” in every box of the crossword.
Dan had always admired his grandpa’s ability to finish those puzzles. He’d sat in the seat next to grandpa, basking in the smell of smoke and drip coffee, spellbound by the puzzle of words and letters. Not that time, though. There’d been the smell of blood and ****. The soft sound of knife tearing through muscle. The endless tears and thoughts of ending it.
The sharp cracking of dry twigs and rustling of greenery demanded Dan’s attention. He spun his head and raised the rifle to his eye. Where was Calvin? He’d left with Sarah but he wasn’t nearby.
Bursting through the shadows was a snarling man you might believe to be a bear if you didn’t look close enough. He was massive, standing six foot six and pushing three hundred pounds. Completely naked, he sprinted towards Dan, teeth grinding unnaturally together in an expression of savagery. His forehead, like the others, sunk inwards from just above his eyebrows to halfway up his crown, the skin loose and wrinkled like a tarp.
Dan quickly jumped into the tree, hugging it. He pushed himself up using Sarah’s head as a boost, and hung precariously from an arm-thick branch. The man’s snarling had turned to disturbing wails.
Pulling hard using his back and shoulders, Dan elevated himself onto the thin branch, wincing as it creaked under his weight. It held true though, and Dan pulled himself around the tree and up onto a sturdier arm. This one was thick as a man’s middle and Dan rested there, watching as the man below screamed impossible words. His eyes were bloodshot and unwavering. There was no consideration of sociality in them. They were empty besides the desire to kill, to exert dominance.
Dan reached for his gun, only to find it quite lacking in availability. Heart sinking, he looked down at the foot of the tree. There it was. Lying useless at the monster’s feet.
The sunken head roared, shaking the skin of his face primally and walking around, checking the ground. It hefted a rock in it’s great paw and threw it at Dan. He moved his head just in time but it struck the fingers holding onto the tree and Dan called out in pain, his fingers pulsing sharply.
The sunken head hooted in delight and lumbered off into the forest, no doubt searching for something else to throw. Dan looked at his weapon below. He’d dropped it when he saw Sarah, out of surprise or shock, he didn’t remember. It didn’t matter really. The others always told him he ought to wear it on a strap around his shoulder. They were right.
Dan turned around so he was no longer hugging the trunk, legs wrapped around it’s middle. He faced the forest deep, back resting against the firm wood, the dark of night settling in on onyx leaves. The moon would be out soon. It’d be beautiful at least, and a different view. Dan was excited. The sky was beautiful at night, but there was so much of it and you only got a sliver of it from any one place. You had to move to new spots to get the full effect. At least he’d done that before he died.
There was another shape up in the tree ten feet north of Dan. A figure, sleeping against the trunk. “Hey,” Dan shouted, waving his hands. “is anyone there?”
There was no response from the prone silhouette so Dan saved his voice. It wouldn’t do to attract more. They might get the idea to shake the tree down. As stupid as they were, they were strangely intelligent too. Dan remembered when it first happened, when it spread like wildfire through the populace.
It was his second week hiding in his apartment, doors locked and barricaded, blinds drawn. He’d lived off canned food like beans and ravioli. Dan laughed to himself. He’d thought that was horrible when it happened. What he’d trade now to be back there. Ravioli for God’s sake, it’d be a fine-dining feast.
The fateful day he’d been flushed out had started as he opened a can of beans in the kitchen. There’d been a loud bell, the elevator. Living in the apartment next to it, he’d gotten used to the bell but it hadn’t gone off much in the past two weeks. The first week it’d gone off intermittently as people rushed home for whatever reason. The second week, it’d quieted as more and more people who’d survived the initial spread had died.
He’d snuck to the door and held his ear to it. The heavy, laboured breathing and the dragging, lumbering feet. He’d peeked through the hole and seen the eye of an invalid mind looking back at him. You know that sense that someone’s watching? The undocumented but undeniable human connection? That sense that someone’s there, or the ability to read their emotions through their body language? When you say the exact same thing as someone else, at the exact same time, the exact same way? Dan had heard a hundred different names for them; sunken heads, retards, cavemen, growlers, knuckle draggers. No matter what you want to call them, they have that sense.
The moon was poking it’s head through the curly hair of the treetops now and a wave of illumination was coming out. In a matter of minutes, the slumped figure on the tree became visible.
The only reason Dan recognized him was the button-up earthy green shirt and faded jeans. His head was gone, as if he’d swallowed a large calibre bullet. Resting on the grass at the tree’s base was a shotgun, as well as the spattering of blood. There it was then, it’d ended badly for both of them. Not far from the tower.
Dan began crying, not for Calvin or Sarah. He’d been long numb to the loss of life. It was the futility of it all. He’d set those fireworks off every morning like clockwork for months. There’d been countless times he saw them burst from the forest laden with backpacks full of supplies only to realize he was imagining it.
How soon after they left had they died? It couldn’t have been more than an hour. Sarah’d gone first, that was clear to him. Bursting through the forest they’d skewered her on that tree and probably watched the life go out of her. Dull minds watching the intelligence fade from her irises. They’d been pretty eyes.
Calvin probably ran to the closest tree and climbed up, gun slung around his shoulders. Then why’d he kill himself? He had a weapon, a means to protect himself. The only explanation was there were too ma-
The buzzing of voices snapped Dan back to reality and he turned to the North. From deeper in the forest came the frenzied chorus of voices. It reminded him of the shapeless cheer of sports stadiums. The rising tide of screaming human vocalization.
It got louder and Dan closed his eyes. This was probably the end. There’d been countless beautiful moments in his life to go along with the ugly.
They came from everywhere, a river rushing through reeds.
Dan’s high school graduation, hats flying up, youthful and reckless. He’d kissed Julie Swanson that night beside the fountain. It was the first and last time but he never forgot.
There were at least a hundred of them.
His eleventh birthday. Mom had gotten his favourite cake; chocolate mousse. It’d been prepared with care, candles spread with precision. He’d wished to be a fireman when he grew up.
They swarmed the tree, each one a different face, a different past but all with that wanting void in their skulls. They shook the tree frantically, gaping mouths forming crude grunts.
Dan stood on the steps of the church, as Cindy walked towards him with a smile. He never saw another thing as beautiful as long as he lived.
The tree cracked under the pressure and Dan felt it lurch beneath him.
He glanced up at the sky and his breath caught. At the tower, you could see the hills weaving through the land off to the south. Caught by moonlight they were grey and astonishing in their geometry. That said, even a masterpiece begins to look ordinary when you see it too often.
Here the trees blended together to create a mountain range of wood and pine. Bristly peaks jutted out like dwarves’ beards, and the moon hung differently, just beyond reach. It felt so close, that shimmering platinum orb.
Dan reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He’d saved it all these years for this moment. It dawned on him that he’d forgotten to save a lighter.
The tree snapped heavily and Dan fell.
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End
This story is very different from most I post on here simply because of how long I've been working on it. Please share any thoughts even just to say you hate it more than anything you've ever read or that you thought it was very mediocre. I really appreciate the input.
Some of you may remember I posted a question about exposition in the General Writing forum regarding my book. Some of you made a wonderful recommendation that I drip-feed background information to my readers. I have done that and it's something I'm working on using more often. I've used it again here.
There is a lot of wisdom on this site and I'm grateful for it's existence.
Thanks for reading.
