Judgment Day: Part 13

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Flight

He snapped awake, startled.  The grey light of a rainy morning filled the van and he felt disoriented.  Still in the dream?  There had been rare moments, lying in bed, when he could accurately recall his childhood bedroom and, for just those few waking moments between sleep and real life, he could swear that he was in that room.  As if he could be anywhere if he put his mind to it.  A shift in space that tumbled through his stomach and snapped his eyes open.  Ever since the Metro car screeched to a stop last night, he’d been living in those pre-dawn moments.  Not fully asleep, nor fully awake.  A clouded mind able to calmly transport itself into any memory.  If his eyes didn’t open, if, somehow, he were frozen in those moments, would he ever realize the mistake?  Would he ever wake up again?

He had hoped the light of a new day would change things, make them look a little better, dispel the terrors of the night.  The morning was always supposed to do that.  Just like in all the movies – if we can make it till morning, we’ll be okay.

We’ll be okay.

Molly was gone and somebody was moving towards the side door.  That was this morning’s reality.  The silent world and misty grey skies beyond the windows of a dead woman’s van.  He grabbed the pepper spray and aimed it at what he hoped would be eye level, staring at the sliding side door with eyes that felt as if they were jittering in his skull.  The door opened slowly and Daryl tensed.  Then Molly’s face peeked in and he jerked away.  She gasped and jumped back, her face dropping.  Holding up a roll of toilet paper liberated from the grocery bags, she flashed an embarrassed smile.

“Jesus,” Daryl opened the door the rest of the way and Molly climbed in.  She sat against the rear bench, her face still downcast, then carefully replaced the toilet paper back into the grocery bag.

“Okay,” Daryl muttered.  He stepped out of the van and headed over to the low, concrete wall.  The city below remained silent, the cars on the road scattered and abandoned.  He had hoped for some sort of change, some sign of civilization.  In the morning light, he could make out the bodies.  Some were still in the cars and others lay where they fell, untouched.  Unaided.  How could the world end so completely?  Whatever catastrophe had caused this, there had been some time before it hit. Enough time for a lot of people to stop and get out of their cars, or pull over, or even start to help each other.  Two people had died in what appeared to be an attempt to pull a woman from a crashed SUV.  The three corpses lay there – the woman half in her car, one of the men still clutching her wrists.  The end of civilization frozen in time.

A steady rain fell from the gunmetal sky, cool and soothing.  A cloud of smoke still poured from the entrance to the Metro across the street, the bodies of his fellow survivors scattered around the Metrobus.  No sign of monsters.  He turned away, looking up Viers Mill.  There was a grocery store and a strip mall with a Radio Shack and a pawnshop.  The sprawling Wheaton Plaza was behind him, but he had no plans to venture in there without a squad of Marines.  No, the little strip mall across the street would be the first stop, then he would head home.  If it was a disease, if survival was based on some common factor, then perhaps it was in external factor.  Food, vitamins, whatever.  He lived and ate with his housemates, so perhaps they shared an immunity.  But, if not, then the safest bet would be to get to the countryside as soon as possible.  In the movies, apocalypse monsters loved the city.  Even if life didn’t imitate art, all these dead people would soon pose a health risk.  Without them to run the world, how long would the electricity and the water last?    When the city stopped working, when it died, it wouldn’t be a welcome place.

He headed back to the van and climbed into the driver’s side.  “Where do you live?” he asked Molly.

She moved into the passenger seat and hugged herself again, Daryl’s coat draped modestly over her legs.  “I don’t really live anywhere.  I have a girlfriend in Glenmont… But I was just sort of crashing with her until I could find a good job.”

“I’ve seen you at the Metro for months.”

She shrugged.  “Temping.  Odds and ends.”

“Where are you from?”

“Ohio.”

“Oh, well, then.  Should we check on your friend?”

Molly shook her head, sad eyes downcast.  “Can I stick with you?”

Daryl shrugged, “We’re going to hit the supermarket, Radio Shack and the pawnshop.  We’ll fill this thing up with gas, non-perishables, a CB and as many fucking guns as I can lay my hands on.  Like in The A-Team van.  You ever watch that show?  You know, the secret panel in the back where they kept all the big guns?  Then Starbuck would fill a sedan full of bullets from an M-16 and the five gangsters in the then-exploded sedan would stumble out, coughing, and George Peppard would say, ‘I love it when a plan comes together!’”

Molly finally laughed, “I never watched it.”

“Can we go to the mall?  I need to get some decent clothes.”

Daryl grimaced.  “Oh, Molly.  Shopping malls and zombies?  I don’t know.  We’ll go, but we’ll stick close to the door.”

“Have you seen any more of those…things?”

Daryl shook his head.

“Maybe it was just some weird thing…Like an X-Files thing.  Maybe they’re all gone…” she trailed off.

“Maybe,” he started the van and pulled out onto the upper exit ramp, which curved down into the shopping mall.

JC Penny was right by the road that fed into the mall’s vast parking lot, so Daryl pulled up onto the sidewalk by the main entrance.  A line of cars, trying to exit the mall, were left abandoned.  Their headlights still shone, but many of the engines had stalled out during the night.  He could make out bodies behind the streaked windshields, people doubled over the steering wheels.  A few bodies were outside as well, lying scattered about where they fell.  One group was clustered around each other on the grass beside the sidewalk.  They had lasted a little longer, hugging onto each other as the world fell down.

The store’s well lit entrance seemed small against the monolithic brick front, which was almost as high as the parking garage it faced.  The six doors showed through to a lonely interior.   Daryl cautiously stepped out of the van and moved into the store, scanning the racks of clothes.  “These damn places are like a maze,” he muttered as Molly came in behind him.

“This is women’s,” she said, tilting her head towards the racks on the right.  “I’ll be fast.”  She moved into the display racks, pulling pants and blouses off of hangers.  Daryl followed, keeping an eye out.

When Molly hit the jeans she stopped and, without hesitation, pulled off her skirt and shirt.  She threw them aside, “Everything smells like the subway.” She muttered over her shoulder, wincing at the sound of her voice in the empty store.  She stood with her back to Daryl, only wearing a pair of panties, sorting the clothes she had taken from the racks.  He was transfixed by the curve of her back, the spine against the flesh, a tattoo of a complicated Egyptian symbol on the small of her back and two moles beneath her shoulder. Nothing was left to his imagination as he stared and, shortly, she became a bit more self conscious and pulled a blouse off of a rack, holding it to her front.  She turned on him, a brief warning in her eyes, and he cleared his throat, moving back towards the aisle leading to the exit.  The look of warning faded beneath an impish smile and tossed her hair as he retreated.  Her head bobbed through the racks of clothes as she untied her pigtails. After a few minutes, she stepped out into the aisle in front of Daryl and spun around.  She had chosen a pair of jeans, a blouse and a warm-looking black jean jacket.  Her hair was loose, and she had made an attempt to wipe the soot and grime off of her face.

“What do you think?”  She asked.

“Apocalypse chic.  Very 80’s.”  He said.

“I need bandoleers and glacier glasses, then.”

“A far cry from the 21st Century subway survivor…” The jeans hugged her figure, the short blouse provided a glimpse of her midriff.  Now Daryl was staring again and she flashed him a crooked grin.

“Just like in the movies, right?  The guy and the girl survive even through everyone’s gone?”

Daryl shrugged.

Her smile faded and she glanced uncomfortably into the store, “Has it really ended?  All of this?  Gone in one night?”

“We spent our entire childhood living under the threat of nuclear war.  When we were kids, the world could have ended in 20 minutes, with a boom much more final than this.  That wasn’t so long ago…and the threat didn’t die with the Soviets.  It’s still there, the media just has other things to talk about.”  He looked across the racks of clothes, towards the mall proper.  “Of course, maybe it is just here.  Maybe, 50 miles away, there’s an army roadblock, waiting for the air to clear.”

Molly crossed her arms nervously, “You’d think they’d let us know, then.”

“They probably would, yeah.”

“I was too young for the 80’s.” she said suddenly.

“Well, you got the glacier glasses right.  I had a pair!”  He reached out and took her shoulder, the two of them walking towards the doors.  “Look, don’t think about the end of the world, Molly.  If we stop and think about it, we’ll be on the ground wailing.  Whatever happened doesn’t matter.  All that matters is that we got out of it.  We’ll get supplies, we’ll get to safety, then we’ll think about what happened.”

“Next stop, guns?”

Daryl nodded.  “Then we check on my friends.”

“The friends,” Molly rolled her eyes.  “Not only addicted to bad movies, but a hopeless idealist as well.”  She moved ahead, glancing at Daryl over her shoulder, then turned to face him.  “There’s no one!  I’m not delusional.”

He wasn’t ready to say Martin and Azizi were dead, or anyone else for that matter.  He just stepped around her and walked out into the morning rain.