Judgment (20 page)

              It sounded like a shelf had fallen over, a few aisles away. Evelyn and I immediately ducked down and I turned out the flashlight. We squatted there in silence, listening to the footsteps. Someone was walking around inside the store. No, not walking, more like shuffling along.

              A maledicted. Dammit.

              We didn’t dare move for several moments. I realized from the sounds there was more than one maledicted in here with us. I kept seeing light bounce off the ceiling and then go out again. It was coming from somewhere in the back of the store, and I realized it was a back door. It kept opening, and maledicted kept following each other in. The noises grew along with lots of movement. We could hear gurgled attempts at speech. The sounds of footsteps and more junk hitting the floor were all around us. It was a mob of maledicted, all traveling together, and now they were rummaging through the store.

              I could feel the fear growing within me. We were really outnumbered. I couldn’t see the details of Evelyn’s face in the dark, but I could feel her fingers digging into my arm, her breathing quickening. I could sense her fear. I could smell the maledicted as several sets of shuffling footsteps came closer.

              In a split second decision I decided we needed to just run. If we waited, tried to hide, and they found us there was no telling what they would do. After a certain amount of time they all seemed to go insane and they were capable of horrible violence against the living. I whispered into Evelyn’s ear. “We need to run for the front door. When you get outside you just keep running, back to the motel. Just stick with me, you understand?”

              I could see the dark silhouette of her head nodding agreement. As quietly as possible I adjusted my backpack and turned myself to face towards the front of the aisle. Evelyn was doing the same. “Are you ready?” I whispered to her.

              I saw her nod, grabbed her arm, and went for it. Jumping to our feet we took off in a full sprint up the aisle towards the front door. As we came out of the aisle near the registers, I ran smack into a maledicted. Caught completely by surprise I knocked her down and Evelyn and I both fell over her. I could smell her instantly, feeling slimy rotten flesh touching my own, parts of it tearing off and sticking to me. It took her rotting brain a few extra seconds to understand what was happening, but as Evelyn and I got up and started to run again I heard her gurgling screeches followed immediately by many more. Inhuman yells echoed throughout the store behind us as we broke out into the parking lot.

              We ran right into two more maledicted, who began screaming obscenities and tried to grab us. The parking lot was no longer empty. A dozen more were wandering around, stumbling, mumbling, some on their knees trying to eat the weeds growing through the pavement. They were all months into their malediction and insanity, their rotted brains driving them to attack us the minute they saw us.

              Evelyn and I ran as fast as we could, dodging bodies and shopping carts as we headed for the road back towards the motel. Halfway down the street where we had searched all the houses earlier, we had to stop. I was no track star and Evelyn was pregnant; I was completely out of breath and Evelyn was bent over with cramps. “It’s okay, catch your breath. They’re slow. They won’t catch us.”

              As I looked back behind us, I saw eight or ten maledicted following us, shambling slowly but determined. Behind them appeared a dozen more. They kept coming out of the store, one following the other, until the whole group was making its way towards us.

              Evelyn turned to look and her eyes widened when she saw all of them. She immediately grabbed my arm and motioned for me to get going. “Yeah, ok.” As we started off I noticed the storm again, much closer now. All around the sky was growing dark, the winds picking up strongly, warning of the approaching storm. “Let’s get back to the hotel before they see where we go and this rain hits.” Evelyn nodded as we began jogging up the street.

              We were moving a bit slower now that we had some distance between us and the maledicted, but kept up enough of a pace to get out of site so they couldn’t find us at the motel. As we neared the end of the street, I heard the pack of dogs again barking furiously. Turning to look back, I could see the whole feral pack had come out of the yard and were attacking the mob of maledicted. Some struggled under the attack, some fell to be swarmed and torn apart while many others continued their march in our direction. I urged Evelyn on a little faster. “Can you make it?” She nodded, and we continued on up the highway,

              As we neared the motel the sky darkened even more, the day beginning to look more like night. The massive black clouds were almost on top of us, the wind pushing hard at my back. Just before entering the motel room I felt a drop of rain on my neck as the sounds of thunder began to grow. Evelyn closed and locked the door behind us, drew closed the curtains, and collapsed on the bed. I watched her chest rise and fall with her breathing. I could see her pulse pounding in her neck. “You okay?”

              She nodded, then suddenly threw her hands in the air and smacked them down on her thighs.

              “What?”

              She made a disappointed sort of face at me, then put one arm up in the air and rubbed her arm pit with the other; now the universal sign for “We forgot the soap.”

              She smiled and I laughed for a minute before collapsing on the bed next to her. We lay there for a while, listening to the sound of thunder moving ever closer. “Did you ever count when you were a kid, to see how far away the thunder was?”

              Evelyn smiled and nodded. “Mmm Hmm.”

              We both waited for the next bit of lightning to flash outside the window, and we began to count, me out loud and her cutely on her fingers. “One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousa….”, and the crack and boom of thunder interrupted the count. “So, like that’s supposed to be three miles away right? I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. That storm is sitting right over us now though. Look how dark it is outside.”

              I got up and opened the curtain a bit to show her, and stared right into the rotting face of a maledicted.

              Holy shit.

              The walking corpse immediately yelled and began pounding on the window. Behind him I could see the rest of the pack, now all moving towards the motel. Several of them were still being attacked by the dogs that had followed them all the way up the highway.

              I pulled the curtains shut and doubled checked the locks on the door. Evelyn was now sitting up on the bed, and I grabbed her and led her into the bathroom. “Stay in here.” I stood in the doorway of the bathroom, watching the door and window, wondering how long they would hold up.

              They’re going to break that damn window.

              Quickly I ran over to the side of the bed and grabbed the shotgun and the metal pipe. I brought the shotgun to Evelyn and I kept the pipe. I told Evelyn to lock the bathroom door. “I’m going to hold them off out here if I have to. You blast anything that comes near this door. You understand?”

              She furiously shook her head from side to side as she tried to pull me back into the bathroom. She was desperately trying to spit out words her throat wasn’t ready to say. “No, I’m not going to have both of us get trapped in this bathroom. I can bust them up as they come through the front door. Just stay in here just in case, okay? Just do it. It’ll be okay. I promise”

              They’re going to fucking kill us.

              Evelyn finally relented. I kissed her on the forehead, smiled at her, and pulled the bathroom door shut. I heard the lock click behind me.

              God please don’t let them get to her.

              Outside the thunder raged and the maledicted pounded relentlessly against the glass and the old door. I could hear the growls and barks of the feral dogs attacking them as they attacked the motel room wall.

              I sat on the edge of the bed, just listening to the sounds of madness that my life had become. The gurgling babbles of insane, rotting human beings that were no longer really alive, but not dead either. I could hear the dogs tearing at their flesh. A bright flash of lightning lit up the curtains, showing the shadows of the monsters clawing at my window.

              I can’t take this anymore.

              An extremely loud boom of thunder filled the air, and I heard the downpour of rain begin. It was sudden and loud, like someone turning on a shower. I lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the not-quite-dead to burst into the room.

              This isn’t fair. None of this is fucking fair. Why did you do this to us? Fuck you, God. Fuck you.

              Outside, the rain fell incredibly hard. It came down in a deluge on the roof, against the window, and splattered into quickly forming puddles in the parking lot. It was such a mesmerizing sound that it took me a minute to realize the banging on the door and window had stopped.

              I listened intently. Outside I could hear faint sounds, almost like whimpering, or crying. With the metal pipe firmly in my hand I approached the window. Lightning and thunder danced furiously in the sky. The rain slammed heavily on the glass as I eased open the curtain just enough to see out.

              The maledicted were collapsing. As I watched, they were literally melting before my eyes. The rain, pouring down upon them from the heavens, was melting away their flesh as if it were acid. I jumped back as a hand suddenly reached up and smacked against the bottom of the window. With fingers spread out wide, the hand slowly slid along the glass, leaving a trail of slimy melting flesh where the fingers touched it. I watched as the rotten flesh seemed to simply melt away in the rain. In just moments it was not more than a skeleton hand, and then even the bones began to disintegrate, bits of knuckle and fingertips washing away until the hand was gone.

              Out in the parking lot the maledicted were stumbling all around, beginning to fall as their legs melted away right underneath them. Lying on the wet pavement, they slowly dissolved, their bodies becoming liquid that blended into the growing puddles and disappeared. One by one, as each body disintegrated, I saw their faint, smoky souls rise upwards towards the heavens. I realized that this wasn’t just a regular storm. This was a cleansing. The suffering of the maledicted was ending. The world was being washed.

              I heard the bathroom door open, and the light footsteps of Evelyn coming up behind me. She joined me in staring out the window as lightning flashed in our faces and thunder rocked the building.

              “They’re gone,” I told her. 

              “They’re gone.”

Chapter 13

Genesis; The End Is The Beginning

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

~ Revelation 21:4

              The rain lasted for days, although I’m not sure how many. When it finally stopped, the world had changed. The sky was clear and brilliantly blue. The trees seemed greener and the air purer. The ashes were gone, washed away into the oceans and the soil. That was perhaps the most noticeable thing; the damn dust was really gone. Stepping out into the motel parking lot, the world not only looked different, but felt different. I could just feel that something had changed.

              I had watched the maledicted melt away, and I hadn’t seen a Judge in weeks. Outside I couldn’t hear any hint of human life, neither alive nor dead; just the sounds of nature. Birds chirped loudly in the trees, and bumble bees buzzed around some new flowers that, with the rains, seemed to bloom overnight.

              We spent the next few days scavenging through the town without any sign of any other human life. We were actually able to almost relax for the last few days. We got new clothes, new sneakers, and were working our way through the soups. We even remembered the soap and had baths in a pond just up the road a bit. And through it all there was no sign of a Judge or a maledicted. They had all just disappeared.

              A morning came when Evelyn spoke for the first time. She was sleeping, but it was getting late in the morning and I was eager to get something to eat. I nudged her to wake. “Hey beautiful, time for breakfast.”

              Her lips moved slightly but I couldn’t hear any sound, and she rolled over on her side, away from me. Her pregnancy was really beginning to show now. Lying on her side, I could see the bulge of our child within her, and she had never looked more beautiful.

              “C’mon Evelyn, we need to get going. I want to get some breakfast and then check out those other houses across town.”

              Nothing.

              “Evelyn, hey…wake up. Evelyn…”

              Then I heard her speak for the first time. Low at first, like a whisper, but there was a voice. Surprised, I grabbed her by the shoulder and rolled her over. Her eyes opened wide and she looked at me slightly startled.

              “What did you say?” I urged.

              Her lips moved like always, but now she spoke, crackly, broken, but with a voice. “Stop calling…me… Evelyn.” The expression on her face showed she was as surprised as I was. “Oh my god” she blurted out, followed quickly by lots of coughing, her throat trying to adjust to the new vibrations.

              She sat up trying to clear her throat and I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Say it again.”

              She looked at me and swallowed hard, like a child does when they have a sore throat from a cold. Her eyes looked down and side to side the way someone does when they’re thinking. Then she looked me in the eyes. “Stop… calling me… Evelyn.” She smiled with the realization that her voice was back, and we hugged briefly.

              “Hi,” I said. “Welcome back.”

              She smiled again, coughing some more as I rose from the bed for a bottle of water. “Here, drink this.”

              She took several big gulps and cleared her throat.

              “What do you mean, don’t call you Evelyn?”

              She spoke slowly, in broken sentences, coughing every other word. “I was named….after my grandmother.” She paused to drink another sip of water and clear her throat again. “I’ve always…*cough* …hated it. So… old fashioned. I’ve always just… gone by Eve.”

              Eve.

             
It only took a few seconds for it to hit me.  The word rang out in my head over and over; Eve, Eve, Eve.

              No fucking way.

              I said not a word but rushed out of the room. “Adam?” I heard Eve yell as I ran out into the parking lot. I looked around for a moment at the bright green foliage that had rapidly expanded its hold on the motel ever since the rain storm. I saw all the beautiful flowers that been blooming like crazy, helped along by dozens of bumble bees and humming birds. I ran to the motel sign by the roadside, the same one I had seen every day for weeks. The familiar words ‘The Garden’ were on it, but now I quickly tore away the overgrown plants that covered the rest of the sign. I pulled and ripped at the vines, until finally I could see it all. Now reading its full length, I fell to my knees as Eve came out of the room and into the parking lot. She walked up behind me as the full realization of it all hit me.

              I stood and turned to her, pointing to the sign; the sign that read “The Garden of Eden”.

              It took a few seconds, and then I saw the realization in her face. There we were, Adam and Eve, standing in the Garden of Eden.

              It now fully hit me that the Judges were truly gone. We hadn’t seen a maledicted since the rains that washed them away.  We hadn’t seen or heard another living human being for a month. I had heard no screams, no guns, no cars; no sign of humanity whatsoever.

              Looking around, I saw and heard only peaceful silence. I walked out into the road and looked both directions. A large herd of deer about a half mile up the highway slowly crossed from one side to the other. In the sky were only birds. Neither Eve nor I left the parking lot for quite a while. We stood in silence, taking it all in, pondering the surreal enormity of our realization. I heard the wind blow, whispering through the tall weeds behind the motel. I heard the chirping of birds and the crickets. I watched the bees fly amongst the beautiful blooming flowers. The herd of deer walked right past us in the road, their hooves clopping against the cracking asphalt. Through those cracks grass grew wildly, slowly making the asphalt disappear. Nature was reclaiming the world.

              Over the next few weeks it became abundantly clear that Eve and I were entirely alone, the only human life left on the planet. We walked freely out in the open, our minds and bodies entirely care free, surrounded by a new paradise. The world had come full circle. Mankind had been purged from the earth, and the cycle begun again, just as it had been told in the bible; the story of Genesis; Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

              For days I thought about what had gone wrong. I remembered why I had generally hated people. I remembered all the things the dead cop had told me; how evil we were, how wrongly we had acted in treating each other and the world.

              When people would talk to me about the bible, I never believed it to be actual history or truth. I thought of it as just stories written by men. But when I thought of things like Noah’s Ark and how God cleansed the world in a flood sparing only a few; that actually made sense to me. I had no doubt that the world could use another good washing, I just never thought it would actually happen.

              I’ll never understand how someone like me could be chosen to restart the human race. After all, I drink, I lie, I cheat, I’ve stolen, I have sex for pleasure; sin is my middle name.

              I pondered this for a long time

              Then I remembered something my father had told me when I was a child. He said “As long as you’re a good person at heart, you’ll get into Heaven.”

              And I get it now. We are all born with the same instincts and desires. Pride, lust, envy, wrath; these are all born into us, a part of the human animal. Having these things, feeling them, does not make one evil. It’s how we react to them, how we act on them, what we do with them that matters. Father Donavan was right. It’s not the tools we are given, it’s what we choose to do with them. 

              My father was right too. I know I’ve done some things that I wasn’t sure about, things I regret, but deep inside I always knew I was a good person. It’s not always about what we feel or what we’ve done, but the intentions we carry within our heart. 

              Burden yourself not with the things that come naturally, don’t be afraid of the instinctive things you feel inside. Embrace them, but live with good intentions and stay pure of heart.

              Being human is not a sin.

              In another five months or so Eve will give birth. We’re going to name him Cain.

~ END ~