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Tap tap tap
Constant, unrelenting, life-affirming, and crazy-making.
Tap tap tap
More leaking from who-cares-where echoes off the walls and marks time like the ticking of a clock. It’s almost as noisy and unwelcome as my companion. God, how he prattles on. I shouldn’t have brought him down here, he’s endless.
“Did you see that thing in the south corridor?” he says, to illustrate my point.
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him this many times each day partly out of kindness to alleviate his stress, but mostly to try and shut him up.
I stand up and walk around a few times to wake up my legs. I’ve been squatting against the concrete wall for a couple of hours; if I’ve been counting the water drops right; and my toes are numb.
“Don’t worry about it.” he parrots as he rocks back and forth to avoid me when I shuffle by him on my rounds. He starts making that noise–the one I can’t tell whether it’s sobbing or snickering.
“Dammit, Durbin, it’s safe enough down here, so you don’t have to analyze every noise and shadow. It’s just shoppers. Relax.” I say.
“How much longer?” he asks.
I know that he’s asking about morning, when we can go up and hunt–but his voice has a hollowness to it that suggests a darker question: How much longer?
“Two more hours, give or take.” I answer.
Milky light from the cloudy sky outside gradually illuminates our space. The chain link fence is obscured by some old fabric, and the padlock is now visible enough to go and unlock it so we can exit. I am careful not to make much noise with the keys, always assuming something is waiting on the other side of the fence or down the corridors which are only barely illuminated with the weak morning light. The fence creaks a bit as it opens, so Durbin and I wait for a while before making a move in case we’ve attracted any unwanted attention.
“Let’s go.” I say.
Leaving the tunnels is always a stressful event. Durbin makes it worse, since he narrates the ordeal, pointing out what’s moved in the night.
“That section got a new blockade.” he whispers, and inspects a makeshift wall made of wet plywood and a sturdy sheet of corrugated metal.
“We’ll come back for that later.” I answer, referring to the metal. That could have all kinds of uses.
“But I wonder what’s back there.” Durbin says.
I shake my head and shrug. I don’t want to know just now, but we should monitor the exit today to see what surfaces.
The west hallway slopes up toward the main atrium. The flooring is still pretty sound in this part of the mall, and there aren’t many corridors that intersect it, meaning fewer blind corners to worry about. It’s not ideal to encounter one of the shoppers in this enclosed space. There are cracks in the ceiling that worry me, though. If this part gets blocked off by some crumbling at night, we’d be down to just one other exit.
The corridor ends and we’re standing in the old food court, with weak sunshine streaming through the broken skylights. Debris from the collapse is all around us, and we have to move carefully to avoid the spears of glass and the shafts of twisted rebar that jut from the floor like stalagmites in a cave. My cave. Our steamy breath clouds my vision as I scan the area for movement in the shadows.
The sinkhole landed the entire north part of the mall about 30 feet lower into the ground. This section had been subterranean already, and housed restaurants and the lower level of a few department stores. The skylights ensure some light during the day will illuminate the atrium, and there’s a creepy solemnity that reminds me of being in a cathedral.
I was just outside of the worst part of the subduction zone at the time, but most of the buildings and houses in my part of town were flattened during the quake anyway. Parts of earth all over the city were unstable, and things that hadn’t been flattened were swallowed up by the sinkholes, like this place.
The big quake happened at night. Many people woke up to the earth rocking violently. The lucky ones never woke up at all. Heading downtown seemed like a reasonable idea, to wait for help that never came. The city center is a mess. If the roaming mutants don’t kill you, falling parts from the facades of the few remaining buildings might.
The streets were filled with danger, sure. But I didn’t really believe that the world was falling apart until the seasons stopped changing. I’ve never experienced cold so bitter or a winter so endless.
“It’s pretty bad today,” Durbin said.
“The weather or your leg?” I ask. The cold is biting and the shock of wind is causing me to convulse. Durbin took a fall about a week ago, and got a pretty deep gash above the knee on his left thigh. We did our best to clean it, but the wound is infected. It’s weeping through the bandage we’d wrapped it with, and he’s feverish.
“Ah, the cold. My leg’s okay,” he said. “I keep thinking one of these days that Hamburger Hut is going to be open.” a smile flitted across his face.
Between the cold and the talk of food, I was ready to move.
“First thing’s first. Can you climb out of the pit on that leg?” I ask.
“Yeah, like I said, it’s fine,” Durbin responded, his irritation showing.
“Should we camp out and see if anyone from behind that blockade emerges?” I was still thinking about the things I could do with the sheet of metal. For one thing, it would strengthen the chain link fence. Even though the shoppers didn’t bother us most of the time, it would be good to have a better shield during the night.
“You want to meet the new neighbors, then?” Durbin raised his eyebrows. “Shall we bring a casserole to welcome them?”
“I’d rather get rid of them, but we don’t know what they are yet,” I say, and start coughing aggressively.
The virus that spread among the earthquake survivors causes chromosomal mutation. I assume it’s viral, anyway, because the antibiotics that I was able to liberate from the rubble of a nearby pharmacy had no effect when I started to get sick. The virus affects people differently, but I experienced a lot of wheezing and vomiting at the onset. Then, the abnormalities started to become noticeable.
When I found the underground oasis of the mall, I raided what was edible and was happy to find sturdy boots, warm clothes, and a radio at one of the stores. At night, huddled under a pile of coats, I listened to that radio, feeling terrified and alone–yet connected to the world far away from the ruins where I found myself. One night, I heard an interview with a scientist on the news. He was talking about chromosomal inversion, resulting from this virus, and, just as it sounds, the chromosome becomes inverted– its segments are reversed from end to end. A piece of the chromosome is removed and then reattached but opposite from the direction of origin. The upshot is that I’m shrinking and losing a great deal of muscle definition. I’m a full foot shorter than I was last year. It doesn’t hurt, and there are some advantages to being smaller when much of the day is spent crawling around a jungle of debris, trying to stay hidden. But I do wonder when it’s going to stop. How small can I get before I disappear? The scientist didn’t offer much in the way of answers and kept stressing that they were running tests on some of the afflicted. Not long after, the radios stopped picking up any signals at all.
“You think the new neighbors aren’t shoppers?” Durbin asks.
“Shoppers never stay put, and they don’t build shelter,” I reply.
“What do you think about my going up and trying to find some food and some more medicine for your leg? And you wait here out of sight and see if you can spot anyone or anything coming out.” I say.
Durbin chews on his bottom lip and regards me thoughtfully.
“Okay. But I don’t like splitting up, do you?” he asks.
“On the contrary–having a break from you will be the best part of my whole week.” I snap. Then, relenting, I add, “I’ll be fine, and I won’t stay up long.”
Durbin loosens a piece of rebar from a nearby pile of rubble and hands it to me to use as a weapon.
“Watch your back, Carlyle,” he says and positions himself behind the counter of an old Orange Julius Cafe. “God, I can still smell the orange cream frothiness.” I hear him say.
I walk quickly and quietly up the defunct escalator and grab hold of the knotted rope we use to climb in and out of the underground mall. The dirt is hard and slippery, covered with permafrost. I lose my grip a couple times, and drag myself out of the pit and onto the cold hard ground. I examine my hands to see how bad the rope burn is, and look around for any sign of life.
Buildings have been leveled or burned, and the asphalt is either cracked or sunken. An icy wind terrorizes me as I uncover the old bicycle that I’ve been using lately and start riding north along the river. In the absence of civilization, wild animals have started to retake the area, and I see a mother black bear and two cubs lumbering along on the other side of the water. I’m startled by sudden movement, and see a pack of coyotes dart across the vacant street ahead of me. Seeing nature reclaiming this urban death zone gives me flickers of optimism. But as the wind rustles the bare branches of the trees, it sounds like the clattering of bones and I wonder if they’ll ever blossom again, or if anything will ever grow in this long winter. Fragrant memories of fresh fruit and vegetables tease me as I continue along.
I pull the bike around the side of a big block of warehouses in the industrial district. I’m pretty sure we haven’t raided some of the crates near the railroad, so that’s my destination. I haven’t seen anyone yet, and my good fortune continues as I come across an open train car with about a thousand cans of assorted foodstuff. This has to be someone’s stash, so I act quickly and fill my backpack.
My next stop is the ruins of Good Samaritan Hospital to see if I can score some topical antibiotics for Durbin. This is dangerous. There will be shoppers and maybe worse. I curse out loud at Durbin. I’m furious at him for his carelessness. Damn idiot. He was swinging on our rope ladder like he was Tarzan, and he slipped. He could have broken his neck, and part of me wishes he would have. But instead he landed on some broken bits of concrete and now he has an infection, and it has to be my problem.
He’d been my problem ever since I met him. I was lying low as usual, observing a gang of mutants from the safety of an empty dumpster. Durbin was sitting in a tree with a bag of bricks, heaving them down at the mutants, trying to kill them. He had pretty good aim, and when the gang was lying bleeding and writhing, he jumped down and stole whatever supplies they were carrying. He’s the most inelegant hunter I’ve ever seen. I followed him, though, I guess I was lonely, and he had a tough, intriguing handsomeness to him. He thought he was safer up high, but I knew that underground was a better bet. Warmer too. Durbin tried to peg me with a brick once I made my presence known, but as he says, he couldn’t ruin a pretty face, so we’ve been companions ever since. What an idiot.
The hospital’s glass doors are yawning open as I creep up. I can hear the echoes of some rustling in the halls. I move silently into the old ER and start going through the cabinets, hoping to find some kind of ointment that would help Durbin’s infection, or maybe oral medication would be okay. I start to panic when I feel the urge to have another coughing fit, which would alert anyone here to my intrusion. If only there was any medication here that could help me. But no.
I give in, unable to help it, and start hacking and throwing up on the hospital floor. I look up and see that I’m surrounded.
These mutants are farther along in their affliction than I am. They stand about three feet tall, and their pale skin sags grotesquely around their jowls, as though they have beards made of flesh-colored orange peels. Despite their fearsome appearance, I know that they aren’t strong, but they are armed. One has a scalpel, and another one has a metal curtain rod that he’s holding like a staff, tapping one end of it on the floor. The smallest one of the gang makes a guttural snarling sound and starts to creep forward towards me.
I jump up and stand at my full height–an imposing 4 foot 5 inches, and shove one of them to the side as I run through the open door back to the street. It was an unsettling meeting, but the only consequence was that I didn’t find Durbin’s medicine. There are shrieks and howls coming from the hospital, and I decide that it’s best to try again another day.
As quickly as I can, I return to the mall-hole, and carefully navigate the rope down as the sun is setting. Night means that the cold temperatures will go from agonizing to deadly. I tiptoe down the escalator and check behind the counter at Orange Julius. There’s no sign of Durbin, which worries me. I walk around the atrium urgently trying to find him. Once the light is gone, it is difficult to get safely to our enclosure for the night, and the darkness is gathering quickly.
Almost obscured by the lengthening shadows is a pile of something across the atrium, so I make my way there to investigate. There’s a tingling sensation on the back of my scalp. Yes. It’s Durbin. Or it was Durbin. His body was little more than a pile of stained rags. It’s unusually violent behavior for shoppers. Maybe the new neighbors have a new kind of mutation. I look away in disgust, and realize I’m alone again. Again.
I’m able to navigate the darkening halls and notice that the new barricade seems untouched. It would be too risky to abscond with the corrugated metal sheet at this hour. I lock myself back into my cage for the night and wait for the morning.
Another result of the mutation is that I don’t sleep anymore–maybe for a half hour or so. I allow myself the brief doze, and dream of Durbin. He’s in the cage with me–I think it’s a memory of our first night together.
“Why do you call them shoppers?” he asks.
“Because it’s the mall, and they’re constantly shuffling around–always looking for something,” I answer.
“But they don’t pay for what they take.” Durbin teases me.
“The things they’re looking for aren’t for sale,” I say.
“Is that them knocking?” Durbin says, glancing around in agitation.
Tap, tap, tap
I wake up and realize my face is streaked by rivers of tears that fall on the mall’s linoleum floor.
Tap, tap, tap.