Judgment Day: Part 11

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He pulled out the dead woman’s cell phone and began dialing numbers again. Nothing went through. She watched him, saying nothing, and swallowed nervously when he flashed her a weak smile. He set the phone down beside him and crawled into the space between the two front seats to stick the keys in the ignition. He spun the radio through both frequencies, up and down the band. The best he found was an EBS signal on an AM news channel.

“They are dead.” Molly said when he came back to his position behind the passenger seat.

He opened a bag of cookies from the groceries and took a few out, handing the bag to Molly. “You’ll make yourself crazy thinking about it. We survived, those people in the first car survived, so others have to be okay.”

“And how many survivors will be killed by…” Molly swallowed and brought shaking hands to her face.

Daryl closed his eyes, visions of his fight with the creature screaming into his head. If he had moved faster, would that child be alive right now? He opened his eyes slowly to look at Molly. And is surviving worth the effort? If those creatures were in for the long haul, they’d have no trouble bumping normal people a few notches down the food chain. Hell, life without the cities, the armies and the technology of civilization would move them down to the bottom, anyway.

“We’re not special,” he told her, “Others will hide and get away.”

Molly looked like she was about to fall apart again. He tried to smile, tried to keep the shuddering edge out of his voice. “Get some rest. We’ve put in a hard commute home.”

She glanced at him, “You can joke? Are you crazy?”

He shrugged.

“How can you act like this is just part of your day?”

He shook his head. But his mood shifted as he thought about it. “I don’t know.” He sighed. “You know, ever since I was a kid, I’ve dreamt of the apocalypse. Not something horrible or Biblical or anything. Nothing like this. Just my friends and I alone in the world. Stupid fantasies, too many bad movies…”

Molly’s eyes darted to the floor, “Lots of kids have those dreams.”

“Escapism.”

“Yes, I suppose.” She seemed calmer as she talked, drifting through nostalgia. She was exhausted. They both were. As she spoke, she seemed to drift towards sleep.

He tried to look for that calmness inside him, the great come down after a battle. It wasn’t a calm, really. He was confused and scared, but there was a deeper feeling. Thrilled, maybe. Edgy. Talking of stupid childhood fantasies burned in him and he almost felt guilty for feeling that he had finally met a challenge that wasn’t the day-to-day nothingness of the train ride and work. Countless dead, civilization in ruins and no explanation. Yet Daryl felt like a child on Christmas morning. For the first time in a very long time, he didn’t know what to expect. He felt in total control of his life, even though everything around him had literally become an out of control train wreck in the space of a few heartbeats. But it wasn’t the right reaction. Perhaps it was a descent into madness.

“Too much sci-fi when you were a kid.” Molly said, watching him. “What’s that movie you mentioned earlier…?”

“Night of the Comet. 1984. Catherine Mary Stewart. Comet vaporizes everyone, excepting those who were shielded. Partially exposed folks turned into mindless monsters.”

“Jesus,” Molly replied, “So your brain is swiss-cheesed with sci-fi trash. There’s your problem. So what’s next, Mad Max?”

“What?”

Molly shrugged, “You know how all the movies end, what do we do now that we’ve survived?”

He laughed. She read him well, and he had been thinking of the next step. “Supplies, and we’re going to look for my friends, my housemates. I don’t know, they’re probably dead.” He looked up at her, “Or worse. But I don’t have any family left; those guys are all I got.” His eyes met Molly’s and he held her gaze for a moment. “And you?”

“And me…?” she answered slowly.

“Family?”

She shook her head, “I don’t have anyone. A sister in California…” she shrugged.

“No one at all?”

“What if your friends are…?”

“Then we head to the country, find some place where we can keep our heads down.”

“Hide? Is that all we can do? That’s not how it works in those movies.”

Daryl was still feeling short of breath. His neck and back were aching and there was a growing pain behind his eyes. “If a combat ready airborne division had been on that train and survived, I think we’d have a few options. The two of us… We’re babes in the woods.”

A few minutes passed while Molly sullenly nibbled on a cookie. Daryl began sorting through the rest of the groceries. After a while, he glanced back up at Molly. She was staring off to the side as she took mousy bites. “You ever watch Scooby Doo? Looks like we’ve got out own Mystery Machine, eh?” He flashed her a smile and she returned a weak smile of her own.

He popped a cookie in his mouth then turned the cell phone on again. “I like the way Scooby and the gang were always on a road trip. Stuff never happened in their hometown. I don’t think they were ever in their hometown, were they? They were always driving through the bayou, or going on a ski trip or driving through some New England town to visit someone’s aunt or uncle or grandfather, who happened to live in some haunted place. Or they’d just be driving and they’d run into a headless horseman, or stop to help Abbott and Costello change a tire. That sort of stuff. Bizarre show, really.”

That got a bit more of a smile. Molly finished the cookie then drew her knees up to her chest and hugged herself again. He spared a furtive glance at her thighs and underwear, and she did nothing to cover herself.

“It really is modern art, you know. The cartoon, I mean. The social ley lines exposed by pop culture…”

“I never watched that much TV.” Molly finally said.

Daryl nodded, “Best parent I ever had.” He popped another cookie in his mouth. “I share a house with these two guys, Martin and Azizi. They’re as bad as I am when it comes to this pop culture nonsense.”

“How’d you meet them? Your friends?” She was seeking normalcy through him, and he was surprised to actually realize that. People’s reactions tended to be a mystery to him.

He dialed 911 for the fourth time and listened to the circuits are busy message while he answered. “We met in university. I didn’t have many friends, so I was kind of glad when the school assigned us all to the same suite. I hate meeting new people, you know? We got along, we kept in touch, we all ended up in the DC area. Why not try to recreate the old college days?” Daryl shrugged. “Well, it was cheaper, anyway. This is an expensive town.”

He closed his eyes and, immediately, saw the dead from the subway car. Images that would never leave him. He looked over at Molly, who smiled thinly and then looked out the moon window, another mirrored window, her reflection bouncing back again as it had every day on the train. Her face was smudged with soot and her hair was a singed, scattered mess. They both smelled of the subway fire – an acrid, electrical smell, that vicious smoke clinging to them.

He watched her as she drifted into a restless sleep while, outside, the rain grew in intensity. Daryl turned and stared out the windshield at the lights of the city, listening to the pattering rain against the van, straining to hear anything suspicious. It was a normal world out there, the rain beading and rolling down the glass as the sodium lights flared in the chilly darkness.