Authors: Mortimer Jackson
I wanted a place to hide. A place where Tom wouldn’t find me. No such luck. All those months of living in the same house had a tendency to expose every nook and cranny.
Hating myself for my failures, I ran straight to the bedroom like a little girl, where I cried until I couldn’t. When I left and entered the kitchen, I saw him warming up a can of chicken soup.
He told me to have some breakfast. His voice was calm and normal, as if nothing between us had even happened. Like we just woke up, and it was the next morning.
My first thought then was how meaningless the word breakfast had become. Without the context of night and day, time was just an hour on a clock. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, were just part of the same three square meals each day. One that in the end was no different than the other, considering the fact that we would always have the same damn food no matter the time. Gone were the days of eggs and bacon in the morning, sandwiches in the afternoon, and a glass of wine at night.
My second thought, one that lingered longer than it should have, was how indifferent I would have been if Tom had died. I could see him in the kitchen with his head over the stove, gleaming back at me with the same smile as the one he’d used when our marriage wasn’t a complete façade. All-the-while I imagined him lying lifeless on the floor, and feeling strangely comforted by the image.
The calendar on the wall was gone.
I asked him where it went, looking to the wall where it had once been.
He told me that I was getting obsessed with that calendar. That I should apply myself to something other than waiting to leave.
When I asked him what I should do, he gave me one of his empty notebooks. This one. The one I’m writing my entry on.
At first all I used it for was to jot down the remaining dates of March. One page for each day that passed. I wasn’t going to humor Tom. I wasn’t going to pacify myself while the rest of the world moved on. Unlike him, I wasn’t going to forget.
We’d been down there for three months. And by then, who could have known what was happening outside? For all either of us could be certain, the infection had already been dealt with. People could be returning back to their homes, rebuilding what had once been destroyed. What if my friends, Julia, Brett, Mike, or even Stephanie were back in San Fran, wondering where I’d gone?
Whatever was happening outside, I wanted more than anything to know. Instead I was trapped inside my own little hell, unable to escape no matter how much I wanted to. The dying marriage that I once had with Tom had now decayed into something else.
I was his prisoner.
April. I knew it was April, because I remembered from the calendar that March ended on the 31
st
. Problem now was that I didn’t know when April ended. Was it the 30
th
? Or 31
st
, like March? I wondered also what picture was on this month. What new sights of Iceland had I yet to see?
For the rest of April until the 20
th
, today, I set my sights on getting that bunker door unlocked. I was going to get out even if it killed me. Even if Tom killed me.
I went back to sharing the same bed with him. If I was going to try anything, I needed him disarmed. Having him think that I trusted him after all this time went a good way into doing precisely that. I even went ahead and had sex with him the first night, as much as the thought disgusted me.
To no surprise, he bought it. After he came, he told me how glad he was that I’d forgiven him. The warm feel of his body nearly made me think that I had.
It’d been three months since I last had sex. A moment of curiosity then, when I wondered if the man I’d done it with was still alive. If he went with the rest of the evacuees.
Tom kept a gun in the safe. I remember seeing him bring it in before we sealed the door. It was a pistol that belonged to his father. Said he got it during the war, when he swiped it off a dead SS general.
He kept the pistol inside a safe along with our passports, wallets, and cash, just in case. I didn’t know the combination, so I asked him if I could see my passport. When he asked me why, I said I wanted to know if they weren’t expired. So that maybe, if the day came when we could finally leave, we could just grab our passports and go on a vacation together. Preferably someplace sunny.
Tom seemed to like the idea. Either that or his smile was only meant to keep me entertained. To keep me dreaming.
He unlocked the safe while I watched his hand on the dial.
25; 4; 15. I repeated the combination in silence until I knew the numbers better than the date of my own birth.
Good for two years, the passports said.
I feigned happiness.
The following night, I made certain that Tom was asleep. I whispered in his ear. He didn’t hear me. It was two in the morning, and Tom was out cold. I grabbed the pistol, and tip-toed my way up the ladder into the tunnel. If Tom tried to stop me this time, I swore to myself that I would be ready to shoot him dead.
Once again I struggled with the door. Only now there was something else there that I hadn’t noticed before. A lock tied around a chain. Tom must have done it the first time I tried to leave.
I hesitated over what to do. But I guess I didn’t have much of a choice.
I shot the lock.
A shock of noise and vibrations reverberated around the bunker. I could feel it all, coupled with the warmth of the pistol in my hand, and the burning smell of gunpowder. Tom heard it. I could feel his bare feet shuffling around downstairs. Calling my name as he ran.
I didn’t wait for him to show up. I set myself to unfurl the chains and open the latch.
Again, it was heavy. Sturdy as a rock.
With all the muscle I could put to it, I was able to weaken but not completely undo the latch.
And that was when he showed up.
The scream startled me. He blared for me to stop.
I aimed the pistol at Tom, my hands and fingers shaking as I did. Determined as I was to leave, a part of me was surprised at how much I was willing to do, and at how far I’d already gone.
I had a gun pointed at my husband’s chest. This was the point of no return. Live free or die, there was no going back to the past four months of safe living underground. I couldn’t surrender. Not anymore. Tom would kill me if I did.
He told me to put the gun down. To see if we could talk about what I was about to do.
He was afraid. I could see his face turn pale, just like mine. He didn’t know if I was going to shoot, and at the time neither did I.
I didn’t know what to do. I had to get that door open, but I couldn’t turn around and let him come any closer. Shooting him seemed a good idea even if it was on the leg to stop him from moving.
But I didn’t want to shoot Tom. Not for everything he’d done to me.
He stepped closer.
I yelled for him to stop moving, and the pistol flailed so hysterically in my hand that a part of me was afraid it would go off on its own.
He assured me he wouldn’t move. But Tom was lying. I could see it in his face. I knew that the moment he had his chance, he would take the gun from my hand and beat me over the head with it. Or shoot me. No. I knew that if I took my eyes away from him, he wouldn’t hesitate to stop me.
And yet in spite of myself I wanted to believe him. I begged him not to come any closer. Then I turned around to open the door. And like the wiser part of me predicted, Tom attacked.
He threw me on the floor, and his hands clasped around my throat.
I couldn’t breathe.
He shouted in my ear, and called me a stupid bitch. His grip tightened. I could feel my color change.
The pressure rose on my skull. I could feel myself turn red as I looked my husband in the eye.
He told me he loved me, and tears began to moisten his eyes. I could feel some of it drop on my cheeks. And I started crying too.
So close to freedom, and yet so hopelessly far.
32 years of life, and this was how I was going to die.
I heard knocking on the other side of the door. Tom was surprised, and so was I. Neither of us knew of what to make of it, but I could tell we were thinking the same thing.
There was someone out there.
The thought alone was enough to spring me back to life. With my foot right underneath the latch, I started kicking while Tom continued to squeeze my throat. The door loosened, and loosened, and loosened, until the sudden shot of hope gave me the strength I needed to finally undo the door.
It swung open on its own, and daylight flooded in. For an instant Tom let go and shielded his eyes. It was hard to take in the natural light after all that time, but I tried.
I couldn’t see straight, but I could see Tom start to shake. He blinked time and time again, and I could have sworn I saw his eyes turn bloodshot red.
Just like them. The infected.
That was when I saw two shapes run inside the bunker and tackle him off of me. At first I thought they were people. And in some Freudian sense they were. At one point in their lives anyhow.
They threw him on the floor and sunk their teeth into his skin. They bit him a few times, then stopped, then turned around to look at me.
Their eyes were a deep crimson red, their chins coated with blood both old and new.
I picked up Tom’s pistol and shot them. One I hit on the neck, the other in the mouth. They both fell.
I stood up, and with the pistol ready to fire, I went up to Tom.
He was still alive, except now he was just like them. He looked up at me, and any semblance of familiarity was gone. What he saw in me was the exact same thing the others saw in the people they killed.
I shot him once in the chest. He was still alive. I shot him a second time, and here couldn’t tell where the bullet went. He raised his hands to pick himself up, but I kept on shooting until he fell, and then I shot again.
My finger kept to the trigger, moving back and forth repeatedly. For every blare of gunfire, I wanted more. I shot him again and again, but it wasn’t enough.
Tom hadn’t suffered enough.
Eventually the gun stopped firing. It was out of bullets. No matter how many times I pulled the trigger, all that came out was a thin mechanical click.
The sound reminded me of Tom’s clacking keyboard, so I stopped. I dropped the gun on the floor, and finally, I stepped outside the basement of my step parents’ home.
The air was different here. Warmer. It was sunny outside. I peeked through the blinds and what I saw what looked to be a normal day. Green lawn, adjacent houses, pavement, and a shining blue sky.
There was no one outside. The streets were empty. Sunny Lane was a ghost town.
I wanted to go outside and check, but a broken window in the kitchen stopped me.
It dawned on me that with the windows closed and the doors locked, that must have been how the infected got in. Maybe they heard the gunfire. Maybe they heard it when I tried to open the door.
Either way, the realization hit me all the same.
It wasn’t, it isn’t safe.
It’s been four months since the evacuation. Things have only gotten worse. As much as I want to go outside and see the neighborhood, I’ve been too afraid of what I might find. There might be more of them out there, waiting for me to come out.
Did I want to take that chance? Do I want to now?
I want to believe the blue sunny skies I see outside my window. I want to believe the rustling trees. I want to believe that everything’s fine. And yet I can’t bring myself to take the first step forward.
It’s been two hours since I killed my husband. In that time I’ve locked myself upstairs in my step parents’ bedroom, keeping nothing with me but an empty notebook and a pen. I’m writing because it’s all I can think to do. With no one here to talk to, all I can do is jot down my thoughts, and hope that someone reads this. I don’t know if anyone will.
But that’s what people do I suppose. They share their thoughts with the world. In times good, and in times bad. We like to be remembered. And we don’t care by who.