The Past and the Present
Michael, if that was truly his name, might have had valid reasons to mistrust our message. So far, we had it rather easy around here. Ours had been more of an emotional struggle, overcoming the initial fears and getting organized. We faced no menace nor dangers...so far. Maybe not everyone had gone through the same? "Who the fuck are you?" was not a good start for a friendly conversation, but we didn't have many options in selecting future relationships.
We replied in the best and most transparent way we could, and we started with a "Dear Michael." Already writing that quickened my pulse. We chose not to ask any questions, leaving the decision entirely to him whether or not to disclose any details of his situation or where he was. We described how we went through that morning in February, how we discovered things. We told him about the dead people; how they apparently all died for the same reasons and roughly at the same time.
Mary and Annah watched over my shoulder while I typed, rewriting things over and over with my palms sweating as if they were runners in a relay race in the effort of putting down the right words. Sharing emotions and passing Michael the baton with enough reasons to read our words and reply back. I had the impression to be under examination and that every word was wrong and in the wrong place.
Because of all the dead commuters, their demise had most likely occurred between 5:30-6:30 a.m. and everyone seemed to have died in the same way. We were in CET, or GMT+1, so he could use that if he lived in a different time zone than ours. He would then be able to verify whether there were any coincidences in timing. We shared we had proof of at least another person alive in town, though we could not say if there were more survivors.
Funny, while writing those things, my brain felt as if it floated in a cold bath, detached, repelling emotions as poisonous spores that bogged down rationality with their sticky ooze. I wondered whether my wife and daughter felt the same but I could not raise my eyes off the screen.
I told Michael that I didn't believe the causes to be poison or a plague of some sort. We had no symptoms of anything; we felt healthy, at least physically. Unless, for some mysterious quirks of our genes, we were immune to an external agent, but I doubted that was what happened. Everything had been so sudden, with people dying in their vehicles, in their beds, or waiting for the first bus in the morning. Something or someone had access to the switch of human lives on Earth and decided to pull it.
For the first time since that February morning, I formulated a thought that lingered unexpressed and that I repelled, because it frightened me—as when as a child, I lay in bed at night, head under the covers, not daring to move a muscle. Holding my breath, I was certain of a malignant presence in the room that waited for me to move before it struck. I pretended to be dead to avoid death...
I wrote Michael that, as crazy as it sounded, I believed we could have suffered a preordained attack, and on such a large scale that everyone was dead or incapacitated. By whom or by what we had absolutely no clues, nor evidence. Maybe we were just crazy.
Mary squeezed my shoulder when I wrote those lines. I raised my hand to meet hers and we clung to each other; in the end, my emotions had been able to breach the steel barrier the brain raised so eagerly before. I turned to glance up at her face, and her eyes were swollen and wet, but there was no fear when she met mine.
We described our experiences with TV and the radio channels, our searches on the Internet and our inability to get any information beyond that fatal day. Nothing or no one contributed to the news anymore or broadcasted anything on any channel. Twitter didn't work for our accounts, was his still on? Or did he even have one? Utility services were still up and running where we lived on the outskirts of a major Swiss city. He did not need to provide us details of his location in case he felt in danger, unless he happened to be so close to us that we could eventually meet. We concluded hoping he could survive, hold on, and stay safe. I signed it, "Dan and family. God Bless."
My hands collapsed, aching. I realized how tense my entire body was. My neck and the muscles in my shoulders burned. I sighed and turned in the chair.
Annah sat on the couch, her legs raised to her chin. She was crying, making no sound. Only mute and silent tears ran down her face, marking time in a metronome maintaining a consistent tempo with despair and defeat.
A lump formed in my throat. I would give my life and concede to death to give hope and a future to my daughter, even though death would have laughed at my proposition.
I turned around and hit "send", hoping Michael81 would receive and read it, and be willing to reply to us. We knew we might never get an answer from him. Likewise, we might not ever again see the girl with the rollerblades, although in her case we had more things to do than writing a message.
The steel barrier my brain set up as a last defense had collapsed. "Mary, you and Annah are the reasons why I did not break down. We cannot live in fear, hiding like hunted animals or running away from the dangers and difficulties that arise from our situation, for however scary and unreal it is. The truth can be dangerous to know but, more than death, we should fear living in a cage behind bars until old age reaches us and all hope of a future is gone."
I looked into Mary's eyes. "Our future is to work toward Annah's future. I will not hide anymore. I'll wait for the girl in rollers on the street, alone."
"No, you're not. After what you've written just now...how could you say that? Are you willing to risk everything on a bet, an intuition?"
Mary took a step back. "You've assured us so far, but we only have each other. If anything happened to any of us now, the others will not survive. Don't you understand that?" She paused. "Do you really care for us?" She looked away from me and took a few deep breaths.
I wasn't prepared to answer such a question. I watched in awe as she turned her back on me, her head lowered in resignation. For all our lives together, no one has ever questioned or doubted the love we had for each other.
I glanced hopelessly toward Annah, but she'd shrunk even more on the couch, sobbing. I believed Annah wanted to say something, anything to stop what she believed was splitting her parents. Her lips moved and her mouth opened to a void; she started to shake.
Mary turned toward me again and my heart sunk as I expected the worst. My mouth was dry and, despite all my strength—physical and emotional—there I was, my legs suddenly feeling like rubber bands.
"Why, Dan?" My heart rushed and I felt the warmth of a blood surge rising to my cheeks. I loved her so much that I realized she had the power to crush me if she wanted to.
"I know you love us, so why? You know nothing about that girl." She marked it with a punch to my chest with her open hand.
I didn't know how long she'd kept all that inside, trying not to let it go, trying to rationalize, always supporting my decisions. She couldn't do it anymore. She could not hold everything back any longer. It all came out, and I felt it like a turbulent flood. All her temper, fears, angers, and love hit me at the same time. A rainbow of emotions slammed against me, but there was a golden pot at its end: she was still by my side. Yet, I was scared.
Mary vented all her frustration; I bent under the abrupt storm of her feelings. Exhausted, she collapsed on the couch near our daughter. Annah was still crying softly, silently. Mary hugged her and whispered into her ear. I couldn't hear Mary's words, but I recognized the rhythm of an ancient lullaby she used to sing to soothe Annah after a nightmare. I looked at them, and I wasn't sure what to say.
"I cannot lose you; we cannot lose you." Mary said with a welling up of threatened sobs.
I knelt in front of them, relieving my legs from the effort of standing. I opened my arms and embraced my girls. They were the reason I kept going, and I was the only firm and steady ground they had.
We stayed there, together, never feeling so alone and delicate than in those moments. We were a fragile knot of life, a blimp made of love, floating in a universe ever more indifferent and refusing to get involved. I was unable to imagine our future. That night, Mary and I expressed with love our rights to live and desire, and to nurture hope.
***
The next morning, Mary's words still echoed in my mind. We had been married for twenty-two years. Maybe I should have known that she'd never let me go alone as I planned. Against all reason, we all went together—dogs included—to the possible meeting with the girl.
We took a totally different route this time, with many small detours in between. In the end, we reached the Natural History Museum, on the tipping point of a hill. From there, Mary and Annah would be on the lookout for anything suspicious and, at the very least, send Taxi and Tarantula for help. I did not want my wife and daughter to come trying to rescue me if I was truly in danger. In the worst case, I preferred they'd actually run or stay hidden. If I faced a fatal threat and if odds were against me, I didn't want them to risk their lives.
In our favor, the Swiss society was not a violent one. "Mad Max," a realistic movie scenario for most of the U.S., would have not been credible if that story was to unfold in Switzerland, Geneva even more so. Mary used my own reassuring terms as their reasons to accompany me.
"Ok, I agree with you, it's improbable that there will be people out there waiting to kill you or harm you. Fine. Then there's no reason at all for us to stay home and wait, right?"
Annah gave me her look as if to say, "She got you one more time, Dad."
I called Mary on her mobile and put the iPhone in the top pocket of my vest. This way, I could talk to her all the time. Instead of walking straight toward the mall, I took a little detour and talked on and off to Mary to make sure she could still hear me well. I arrived at the photographer's shop from a lateral street. The mall was at the corner, to my right. I crossed the street and paused in the middle of the intersection.
"See me?"
"Yes." Mary confirmed. That lonely whisper—uttered as in a last breath—made me shiver. I felt her love in one single word and, alone in the deserted city, I felt the ache of the world.
I rubbed my face to hide I was talking. "Okay. I'm about to reach the shop." There could have been more onlookers than just Mary and Annah that morning, but I also needed to wipe off my eyes, swollen and wet. All theories about a non-violent society were going to be put to the test and I was the specimen for the experiment.
I kept walking, thinking only about the next step to take, the tension cramped my body from shoulders to belly. As on a minefield, I feared every move I made could have been my last one.
I reached the shop and went to open the door. I am walking into a trap, I thought, and my hand hovered, undecided. Sweat trickled down my back. I closed my eyes and rested my hand on the knob for a split second. I sighed and opened the door slowly, peeking inside. Everything seemed untouched. No one had been there. I stepped in and, with a trembling hand, I took the phone.
"Mary, I'm fine. Nothing to do now but wait." I don't know whether I'd been able to hide from Mary the lump I had in my throat.
"Dan...I love you." Mary's reply came as a reminder of everything I risked and all my assurance melted away like a jellyfish abandoned on a shore, pierced by the hostile light of a deadly sun.
After an hour, no one had showed up. I verified with the binoculars that the paperboard was still sticking up fine, left the shop, and walked back the same way I had before. There were fewer reasons then to believe my life was in danger but still my back was rigid as if I had swallowed a broomstick.
Mary and Annah waited near the car. Mary hugged me. "You look tired, hon. We've seen nothing unusual from up here. Maybe she didn't come."
"Dad, I checked all nearby buildings and the neighborhood with the binoculars. And Taxi and Tarantula have been calm all the time. Can we go home now?"
Faking a smile, I nodded. We went home.
***
It had become tedious, to say the least. Rollerblade Girl was a 'no show' and Michael had not cared to reply yet. Or could not. I tried to perform an IP reverse lookup, but the process did not provide much information either.
Our lives went on as usual. Annah kept studying with Mary. I went around with the dogs, checking on our neighborhood and other nearby villages, or fixing things in the house and getting even more prepared for the next winter. The three of us tended to the garden and the first lettuces were starting to be visible. Tomatoes, cabbages and eggplants seemed fine, too. We also cultivated sprouts of various kinds to add to our diet and soon, during summer, I would go hunting for fruits. One of the advantages of living in a rural area was that orchards were not far, and everything was at our disposal.
Days passed uneventfully until one morning, approaching the shopping mall entrance for the usual appointment with Rollerblade Girl, I noticed someone had finally written back on our paperboard: "You were not alone!"
I called Mary right away. "Rollerblade Girl wrote back. She must have seen you. Come over here and pick me up. I think we can go home for today."
In the few minutes waiting for Mary and Annah to drive the short distance to the shopping center, I started to write down a reply on the paperboard. Who knows, maybe Rollerblade Girl was watching me at that very moment. "I will be alone next time. You can count on me."
The noise of our Volvo grew louder and, a few seconds later, Mary and Annah were at the corner. I got into the car.
"What happened?" Mary asked.
"She must have checked the surroundings these last few days and noticed you and Annah. She wrote 'You were not alone!' with exclamation mark included."
Mary kept silent for a moment, her hands gripping the steering wheel with force. "You plan to go by yourself now, right?"
She definitely knew me. I didn't answer immediately and searched for words. "Mary, I don't think I'm facing a danger anymore."
She nodded. There was nothing more to say.
During the drive back home, the three of us stayed silent. Taxi and Tarantula, sensible dogs that they were, kept quiet, too.
Mary drove slowly, and the desolation and solitude around us were palpable, especially that day. I didn't know what my wife and daughter were thinking about, but I couldn't chase away the thought that there were now four people alive in the area. Four!
I spent the day without having a specific goal; there was so much at stake, for everyone. My mind seemed unable to formulate one thought and bring it to a close.
Thoughts jumped at me and flew away before I could grab them and understand their implications. We held on so much to our previous life; I had clung to that and created a cocoon around us. But the new life was there, so tangible and manifest that the cocoon could not last much longer. I didn't know it then, but the past was catching up with me.
That evening, Michael81 resurfaced: "Youz guys seem kosher," he wrote.
We learned that he came from the East Coast and lived in New York City. There were other survivors with him, gathered little by little in the past weeks, and they'd started to get organized, also little by little. In March, they had seen heavy raining and the rivers, forced underground by Manhattan construction through pipes and through the years, had invaded practically all subway tunnels.
Water was flowing freely in some streets now, bursting through sewers and the same subway stations. There had not been enough sunny weather for water to evaporate, and building shades did not help either. In many areas, water had collected into large and smelly puddles. It had been, all in all, a quite chilly month.
Electrical power was still pretty much available around the city though some areas were in the dark and, when night came, street lights were not functioning anymore. Water reached higher than the curbs in most places and flooded the ground levels. Freezing nights had widened cracks of the asphalt and sidewalks slabs were popping up, turning them into packs of domino tiles, slanted and piled atop each other, especially in the Lexington area where pipes had actually exploded, adding to the water flow. Weeds and cockroaches were everywhere.
Early on, they had seen Central Park horse-drawn carriages riding alone, at times with their dead driver perched on the bench. The scene still gave them all goose bumps. "How can you ever get used to that?" Michael asked.
Some zoo animals must have managed to escape as he swore he'd heard some kind of a lion roaring. He and others never went out unarmed, and never alone. They have been in and out of apartment buildings, to look for others, or for any clue of what had happened.
They had found a girl that way one day, going around with air horns and blowing them to attract people. Michael and his group had almost left the area when she ran down the stairs because the elevators in her building were not working anymore. The poor thing was breathless and he said, "She burst into tears in our arms."
They'd also spotted strange auras at night. "Did you see them where you are?" Michael asked in his email. "Sure you did. They must wear a suit that glows, that's what it must be. They whacked us, man," he wrote. "They're the cause for all that happened and they are after God knows what. They cleaned NYC of the dead. Are they around in the daylight, too? We've not spotted them. Who knows?"
He had seen our messages a good couple of weeks before he decided to finally make contact. He thought us to be a trap. He wrote, "But them, they don't seem to care, they're not after survivors, they're more after the corpses. At least for now. Where they appear, the area is clean afterwards."
He kept saying they didn't have Internet connection where they're staying so, "I'm writing this from an Internet café we broke into recently. You shouldn't expect an answer right away if you write back. We check online for others, but not daily."
Michael went on with a most noteworthy fact: He shot at them once one evening, from afar, with a 7mm Dakota rifle. He swears he got the guy. His head should have exploded and instead he simply turned toward his direction, unhurt. "He looked right at me, man, from that distance and right into my scope. It freaked the hell out of me and I ran." He did not try a second time; he stayed put now, especially at night, when it seemed the 'aliens' preferred to go around. "So, take care, be careful and watch out!"
I had to read the whole thing again. Had we seen "them"? Seen whom? At first, I couldn't make much sense of what Michael wrote: "them," "spotted at night," "aura." I read that part again and it gave me a cold chill, a sudden numbing dread in a fearful anticipation. Internally, and unaware still, a dot from the past had started to connect.
We had not seen anyone ourselves, apart from the rapidly disappearing Rollerblade Girl. And she disappeared behind a corner, not out of some Harry Potter trick. We hadn't seen anything or anyone glowing in the dark.
I didn't want to alarm Mary, so I edited Michael's message, removed all the parts referring to 'them' and printed it. I brought the copy downstairs. Mary was preparing dinner and Annah was reading a book in her room. At home, it seemed we were in some sort of denial, acting as if everything was as normal as ever. Mary had even made a list of books for Annah to read. So that "memories will not disappear," she told her, and Annah could cultivate those memories in her own time and share further. With whom? I thought cynically.
I walked into the kitchen. "Michael, from New York." I showed Mary the email.
She shook her head, without even looking at the paper. "Read it to me."
I did, and finished the whole story with the Central Park carriages strolling around by themselves, and that he was typing the email from an Internet café. Then the good wishes, and that survivors there were starting to get organized. "New York is much larger than Geneva, and this proves there could be others. With time, maybe, many others."
Mary nodded.
She was somber and stared at the stove. Without raising her eyes from the dinner she was preparing, she asked: "How many, Dan? Can you tell me? Maybe it's just that girl we saw...and we might not see her ever again." She paused then, looking straight into my eyes. "I love you, Dan. And I love Annah. Sometimes I wonder whether all this makes sense. What will be our life next winter, or a year or more from now? Can you tell me?"
"Mary..." I started, but Mary raised her hand to silence me.
"I will carry on, for you and Annah. But I cannot promise you for how long, not this way. Why didn't we die, too? Why, Dan?" Her body seemed to implode, as if something broke internally. Resting both stiff arms on the counter, her head collapsed between her shoulders. "It would have been so much easier now."
"Now? What are you talking about? We'd be dead, now. You would be dead, Annah would be dead. Is that what you want? You've seen those rotting remains. Mary, don't do this..."
She kept her head down. "Just hold me, Dan. Please."
I held her tightly in my arms. I cried without making any sound. Mary wasn't, and that made me cry even more. Warm tears, heavy, and coming from the depths. I couldn't lose her. I simply could not.
As if she was reading my mind, Mary whispered in my ear, "I don't have any more tears..."
I stayed there, and hugged my wife hoping she would not crumble any further. That night, the whole night, I kept searching for her, continuously pressing my body against her, breathing her.
During the night, Mary complained a few times she was cold, and asked me to lay next to her even closer and to put my arms around her. I prayed to God that I could be the fire that kept her alive, that kept her away from that cold that grows from the inside. It rises like a shivering fever, and consumes you inexorably, eating up all your strengths and leaving you emptied, hopeless, and ready to give up.
***
The morning after, I feared leaving Mary alone. Instead, she looked at me in her special way, that one look she used so many times in all the years we'd been together, to tell me, "You can let go. It's okay." That released all tensions. I knew she wasn't lying and I needed to foster hope.
She smiled. "I'm fine. Don't worry." Then turned to our daughter. "Annah, tell your dad that we'll be fine."
"Don't worry, Dad. Come back home soon. You promise?"
"I promise." I hoped I wasn't going to disappoint her.
Devotees said that praying to the Lord only when you're in need is hypocritical. Instead, they say, you should pray always, and especially when things go well.
I think the Lord knows better and can see better than anyone into everyone's heart. He knows whether we are sincere or not. He has no need to judge a soul from the number of prayers He receives, even more so when those become, with time, a mere ritual.
Others have mandatory scheduled daily prayers. Does that make them better, or does God prefer them to all His other creatures? Is His love measured by prayer hours?
In my heart, I was sure He knew. If He had time to listen, He knew I was sincere that morning. Besides, I did not pray for myself. I prayed for my wife; I prayed for Mary.
***
I arrived where I was supposed to be to meet with Rollerblade Girl. This time, I did everything in plain view. I stopped the car in the middle of the street. I lowered the windows, stepped out and even opened the trunk. Nothing to hide. Then I sat cross-legged, well in front of the car. I had a Glock tucked at my back, under my vest, and one under the driver seat. My hands rested on my knees. I waited.
The sun started to warm up the air, and the asphalt, too. The hot bitumen's smell and the petroleum vapors soaked my senses. I felt its taste in my mouth and it intoxicated me. I am getting high, I thought, lightheaded. A few crows gathered as casual spectators, perched on the tree in the middle of the traffic island at the end of the street. Unless I imagined all that. There I was, sitting like a duck with a wobbling head like those figurines in the back window of cars. Good thing Geneva didn't have zoos in town as in New York; in that position, and the way I felt, I would have been easy prey for the "kind of a lion" Michael believed roamed freely in Manhattan.
Almost an hour had passed and I could not stand to sit much longer. My joints hurt and sleepiness crept in as the body oxygen level was replaced by the aromatic tar vapors. At that moment, I heard the swishing sound of the rollerblades from behind. The adrenaline rush heightened all my senses. My breathing and heart rate jumped. My blood pressure shot up and a hot flush erupted like a fever making me sweat as if I was taking a shower from within.
Everything happened very fast—a screeching sound made me shiver as the wheels came to a halt and, although it was somewhere to my left and out of my field of vision, I didn't have to turn my head to see her vividly in my mind, menacing.
A cold chill slid up my spine and I felt a pair of eyes staring at me, carving holes into my back; the burning sensation of a bull's-eye glued to my neck.
Rollerblade Girl was breathing hard behind me.
"Thanks for coming," I said, still seated and about to change position. I heard a sound and had the impression Rollerblade Girl jolted when I opened my mouth.
"Who are you? And stay as you are. Don't turn to look at me! You didn't trust me. I don't trust you."
My God. I heard another voice, a different voice than mine, Mary or Annah's after such a long time.
The voice was pleasant, that of a young woman. Not exactly afraid, but not calm either. I tried to combine the few images I glimpsed the first time we saw her with this voice, and tried to imagine even more details about her.
We lived a world deprived of laughter, children cries, chatters, the always-present human murmuring that we took for granted everywhere in the world. One can never feel the presence of something as strongly as when it is no more; the void replaces what once gave us reassurance, continuity, fulfillment. Don't people talk about the deafening sound of silence? I experienced in a flash the unbearable weight of emptiness.
She had a pleasant Italian accent. At a pub, it was the kind of voice that makes you look for its owner. When the charm of the voice marries with the charm of the person then one is gratified with the pleasure of having discovered harmony in human incarnation.
She sounded determined. I didn't move. "Well, I do trust you now. I wouldn't be here sitting like this otherwise. The people you saw are my wife and daughter. And they were worried for me. They still are. They...I...we wouldn't have hurt you."
The voice erupted. "Where are you coming from? Do you know what happened? Is everyone dead? How can that be true?"
"From out of town, in the countryside, and could you stop shooting questions like darts?"
There was a moment of silence.
"Funny you are saying that..."
I didn't make out the meaning of her last remark.
"Don't stand up. Turn around slowly."
With the help of both hands, I twisted around, slowly, as she requested. Rollerblade Girl stood firmly her ground. She was fit with a rather athletic body, dressed entirely in black if not for a peach-colored top that I could perceive more than see from her semi-opened zipped black leather jacket, hiding a full breast. Her recent "shopping" from the mall, no doubt. She wore jeans, tight and low-waisted that perfectly sculpted her figure. A rebellious lock of black hair refused to be constrained by the helmet she wore. Her eyes were invisible behind dark sunglasses. She was very attractive and she kept a crossbow pointed right at me.
"Well, I'm at your mercy it seems. I assure you, I'm totally alone." I noticed she was glancing around searching for the presence of others.
She fixed her eyes on mine. "Okay, mister. What do we do now?"
"Honestly? May I stretch my legs? They hurt."
Rollerblade Girl nodded, and I did it with a grunt of satisfaction, which raised a hint of a smile on her lips. While massaging my knees, I went on. "My name is Dan, Daniel Amenta." I pointed to a bulge near my groin. "And that is an iPhone in my pocket. I would like to call my family."
Her lips raised into a smile again. She must have liked my funny contortions. I couldn't be faster than her dart in the remote case I wanted to try anything.
The crossbow made a short upward jerky motion that I took for agreement so I slowly and carefully took the phone out and showed it to the girl, raising my eyebrows.
She nodded. "Put the speaker on."
I did as she commanded and called home. "Mary?"
"Dan. What happened? How are you? Did you see the girl?"
"All's fine. Why is everyone asking multiple questions?"
"What?" Mary said; Rollerblade Girl smiled more openly.
I couldn't see her eyes through the sunglasses, but the crossbow was no longer pointing straight at my chest, and I noticed her hands were less tense on the grip. "Never mind. I'm okay and I'm with..." I looked up at Rollerblade Girl. She hesitated. I raised my eyebrows again and gestured with the phone.
"Laura," she replied.
"I am with Laura."
"Laura? That's the girl's name? Can she hear me?"
"I bet she can, hon..."
"Laura? This is Mary, Dan's wife. If he introduced himself that is. I'm so sorry if we scared you last time. We meant no harm. You are the first one we have seen in months. Alive I mean..." She paused, then with a firm voice she continued, "If you are alone, you're welcome to come home with Dan...and stay."
I looked at the phone, then at Laura whose expression I could not decipher. I didn't expect that, or to come so soon. Mary was still capable of surprising me after all these years. "Mary? I don't know what's on Laura's mind," I said while looking at the girl. "We've just met so maybe that's premature. I only wanted to reassure you—"
Mary cut me short, ignoring what I said. "Laura, I love this stupid man. Let him come home...please."
What the.... Why and how had Mary taken for granted that I wasn't in control of the situation, and that Laura was in charge?
Laura lowered her crossbow and interrupted my mental rumination. "Tell her not to worry."
"Thank you, Laura. Thank you." Mary's voice burst from the speaker before I could speak.
"If you ladies will allow, may I intervene?" I was ignored again.
"No, I thank you, Mary. I don't want to be alone anymore. I'm frightened and I want to get out of Geneva, too." Laura kept looking around as if she still expected to see someone suddenly coming out of nowhere.
"Okay... I believe I'll be home soon...with Laura." I glanced at the girl, who leaned now carelessly on the car. "I'll call you again."
"I'll get the cottage ready," was the terse reply.
Ever so cautiously, I began to stand up. Laura did not react, watching calmly. I stepped forward and stretched out my hand. "Shall we start again? Dan..."
She put the crossbow on the hood, took her helmet and glasses off, and gave me her hand to shake. "Laura," she said with a smile.
She had beautiful light blue eyes with a dark blue outer ring. The contrast with her dark hair struck me. Her eyes were undeniably attractive, but what I noticed most was that they were frightened, too. And not because of me.
"If the world before had let women do the talking, we men would've had less occasion to fight." I smiled and pointed at her crossbow. "Do you really know how to use that thing?"
Laura smiled back. "You'd be surprised." Then a somber veil fell on her eyes. "I'm less afraid to venture out during the day but I spend the nights hiding. Sometimes I'm too scared to fall asleep. I thought I was the only one alive." She paused. "Instead, you seem...cool and relaxed?"
I gazed at her. "Well, we were scared, too, the first days. We didn't know what to expect. Then we fell back to a sort of normality in our lives. We aren't in need of anything, but we are prepared for the worst. I'm ashamed to say that we practically go along with our lives as we did before...after adjustments, that is. I am lucky, with wife and daughter both doing well."
Laura stared at me as if I came from another planet. I felt she had a burning question, but maybe she was too afraid to ask it right then.
"By the way," I added, "indeed we're not alone. And just to be clear, are you coming with me?"
She began to take off her rollerblades and pulled a pair of sneakers from her backpack, gazing at me for a long moment. "The little girl I saw...your daughter?"
"Yeah. Annah. She's twelve. Almost thirteen she'd want me to say."
Laura nodded. "I don't know if my little brother is still alive. I am...I was in Geneva to study toward a Master's degree. I've not been able to reach anyone from my family." Her voice broke a little before she regained some composure, straightening up her figure despite the weight of her losses.
I got busy with rolling up the car windows and closing the trunk. Laura put her rollerblades in the car and was about to put on her sneakers. I watched her for a moment; she moved gracefully and... I shook my head. I laid her crossbow on the back seat and forced my eyes away from her.
"Listen," I said. "You don't need to come right now if you're not sure...maybe some other day." I glanced up at her.
She gave me a long, level look as if I'd said something weird. I couldn't tell what she was thinking; there were no emotions in her eyes. Then, fear appeared again.
"No. I'm coming with you." The words erupted as if they were darts from her crossbow; fast, direct, piercing. Laura's face paled, and her lips tightened like the string of her weapon, ready to fire more darts. She paused and her eyes wandered around, again as if to make sure we were indeed alone. Then, more calmly, in an almost apologetic tone, she said, "I need to get some stuff from my place. I don't own much, mostly clothing. Maybe we can go back to my apartment another day, too? But before it gets dark." She hesitated. "I also have some food left."
It sounded as if she tried to give me reasons to take her there. She was no longer the resolute girl who'd kept me under the threat of a deadly dart, and I wondered why.
"Food's not a problem, yet. What is with the dark? What exactly are you afraid of?"
Laura did not reply; she got in the car. I sighed. I went to the driver seat, puzzled by that abrupt change. "So, where are you staying?" I asked while starting the car.
"Champel. It's not far from here. Maybe a couple of miles. Turn around and go toward the Cantonal Hospital."
"Alright."
Before reaching the hospital, Laura made me stop in front of an old apartment building, one of those beautiful old Geneva buildings with marble and stone decorations, and with steep, old, shingled roofs. Six floors, but as tall as a ten-story modern building.
She noticed my surprise and explained she rented a studio there. Her family paid the rent directly to the landlord, an old lady she had met only once.
I didn't bother to park and stopped the car in the middle of the street, blocking the non-existing traffic. We got out. The slamming of the doors sounded particularly loud in the deafening silence that surrounded us. Silence that always struck me every time a sudden noise broke it. Like smashing a perfect glass pane, invisible until the precise moment it explodes in thousands of fragments instants later.
"It's on the third floor." Laura looked up. "I'll get some clothes, and be right back."
I glanced up as well and tried to single out a window or a balcony, but they all looked the same. We covered the short distance from the sidewalk to the entrance of the building. The hallway had marble floors, and a beautiful iron balustrade in the staircase surrounding the elevator cage. In that moment, the scene seemed blatantly normal, as if I was taking a date back home.
She stopped on the first step of the flight of stairs, turned and stared wide-eyed at me. "There are two women in the elevator. Sophie and Monique. They worked as nurses at the hospital. I found them both that morning when leaving for my classes."
She did not wait for my reply and started to climb the stairs to reach her floor.
I didn't call the elevator to verify her story. I imagined well what waited for me. Rotten corpses, mouths agape, darkened dry blood. No need to add those images to the ones I fought against on a daily basis. Like shingles, they flew angrily toward me, blown off by that powerful night wind that started everything. I dodged them all, one by one but they kept coming and some splatted on my face, and they hurt.
While Laura was busy getting her stuff, I called Mary and told her about the last twenty minutes or so. Something in Laura worried me. Above, I heard a door closing and steps coming down the stairs. I hung up and, a few seconds later, Laura appeared.
She had changed, and put on a dress and wore flat shoes. She handed me a large bag. Again, I couldn't help but notice how beautiful she was. "Ladies things." She paused. "I want to make a good impression if I can." She smiled.
Well, she did. I held the doorway open for her. "Thank you." She stepped out. "Where do you live, Dan?" she asked when we got back in the car.
I turned. "Near a little village in France. Some fifteen miles from here."
A somber expression appeared on her face and, again, the veil of fright in her eyes. She looked even younger. "You...you are not with them, are you?"
I was about to turn the ignition key, and I froze for a second. I straightened back in my seat, and met her eyes. "Them? Them who?" I frowned. "Someone told me about them just yesterday. He's another survivor. We exchanged emails. In his last message, he refers to some people and used the same expression: Them. He lives in New York. Actually, I still have to get back to him." I paused and stared at her. "Who are these people, Laura?"
She hesitated before answering. Then, she looked straight into my eyes. "I don't think they are...people."
The past got busy catching up and connecting dots. Laura told me what she saw. She was shaken, and while she talked scenes from my youth burst in front of my eyes with a kind of superimposed vision.
What Michael hinted at, and what Laura now described in better terms, I had seen it already, years before. Maybe some twenty-five years before. Shocking. I was ready to imagine every possible scenario but that one.
Laura went on. "I have seen them only during the evenings, though. Three or four times. The first time, I spent the whole night hiding, too afraid to move." She shivered. "During the day, I guess they aren't around. They always start to leave just before dawn, when their luminescence begins to fade."
The difference between Michael's recounting, Laura's encounters, and my experience were that they saw them from a distance, and it had been frightening.
I took a deep breath. I had seen them, too. Only one of them to be precise, next to me for what seemed a long time, but I didn't get scared at all. Quite the contrary, but I wasn't ready to share that with Laura, yet. "You'll need to tell Mary, too. Where we are, and nearby, we haven't seen anyone of the sort you describe."
I only half-lied. We hadn't seen them where we lived in the last couple of months. In that sense, I told the truth. Haven't seen any anymore, though physical evidence of that first and unique encounter was vividly present in every moment of my life.
Laura noticed I was troubled. Anyone would have been by what she had said. She didn't question me, though. In any case, she had no way to imagine the real reason why her recount troubled me so much.
So, all that happened was not the fault of humans. Or maybe it was...but not directly.