Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
“This is going to keep you alive,” I repeat coldly. “You need to do this twice a day until the drain starts to bulge out of your wound. Once it starts to bulge, it’ll need to be removed, but until then, twice a day. Got it?” He gives me a nod even though I still have him gagged. Picking up a bottle of pills, I put them on his chest. “These are also going to be taken twice a day. If you don’t take at least two a day, your body will build up an immunity to the antibiotics too quickly and they’ll stop working and you’ll die from an infection. So take the pills twice a day.” I step back from the table unsteadily as the edges of my vision grow dark. It’s better when I talk, so I try to keep my voice working. My heart pounds and there’s a thumping in my whirling head. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to stand much longer. “I’ve done the best I can. I hope it works.”
I have to sit down. I turn away from the table, feeling like I’m going to throw up again, but before I can do anything, I feel the ground rushing up toward me. Something is wrong. I didn’t have enough time. I’m not going to make it. The darkness swirls around me. It’s too much. This has to be the end. Death has finally grown tired of my charade.
Chapter Eighteen
I decide that I’m over waking up when my eyes finally peel apart and I see the light streaming in at me. At first, I don’t recognize where I am. There are posters on the walls of bands that I’ve never liked and pictures of movies that I wouldn’t be caught dead seeing. As I stare at the walls, I feel like I’m waking up in the skin of someone else. I’m not sure exactly where I am still as I look at the surroundings; I just know that I shouldn’t be here.
It’s not that I shouldn’t be here in this room. It’s that I shouldn’t be alive in the first place. I should be dead right now. There’s no doubting it. Maybe I am and this is some demented reality, but sadly I doubt the rabbit hole has gone that deep yet. I remember blacking out and falling to the ground, but the darkness and the silence that followed felt like they lasted a lifetime. Rolling over on the bed, I look across the room, seeing that Lexi is seated in a chair, rocking as she feeds Charlie. The sight of her makes me wish that I’d died. Who knows how long I’ve been out, but it hasn’t been long enough.
The thought of her and Greg still makes me want to throw up, but I’m certain that there are better things that I should be spending these last few moments with her thinking about. I should let it go, but I’m not so certain that I’m ready quite yet to do that. I’m entitled to a bit of bitterness and I intend to relish it for a while. I don’t know how they saved me or if it was just dumb luck, but I want to spend the last of my life the way I’d like it to end, not watching her sniveling and apologizing. I’m not up for that.
There’s no sign of Greg, which makes me grateful, at least a little bit. He’s probably the last thing that I want to see right now. The only one of them that I can stomach is poor Charlie, who has to put up the rest of his life with these two idiots as his parents and not having me around to help him out. I pity him, but I think he’s going to be a certain kind of strong that’s going to put his parents to shame. If he’s anything like his grandfather, or like his aunt, then he’s going to be just fine. In fact, I’m sure he’ll be running the show in no time.
Lexi notices that I’m awake and looks at me with delighted, happy eyes. “You’re up,” she says with a grin the size of Texas on her face. It’s an obnoxious smile and I don’t want to look at it. It makes me want to throw something at her. Not because it’s a gloating or malicious smile, but because she actually seems genuinely delighted to see that I’m alive and not dead. I’m sure she doesn’t want our last conversation to be her confessing that she cheated on me with my boyfriend.
“How long was I out?” I ask her, feeling like I have a thunderstorm raging inside of my head.
“About a day and a half,” Lexi tells me with a bit of worry in her voice, like that was too long to be out. I don’t know what she’s been giving me to drink, but there’s something potent and terrible tasting in my mouth right now. I don’t think I want to ask her. But, it’s almost as if she can sense the thoughts rolling around in my head and anticipates them before I can avoid asking them. “We ground up some of the antibiotics in another one of the bottles and dissolved them in the water we’ve been giving you. Thankfully, you’ve been drinking them and it looks like your fever broke.”
I smile at the thought she must have put into that. It’s nice of her and a great gesture, but that’s like giving a glass of water to bleached bones. It’s a waste, but I’m not going to shatter her feelings by telling her just how pointless it is to give me the antibiotics. If they’re lucky, they won’t have need of them before they find another supply. Maybe they’ll be smart and use my theory of hitting the veterinary clinics after making sure there are no zombie dogs around waiting for a fresh meal.
“Thanks,” I tell her genuinely, but under the blanket they have on me, I reach blindly for my wound and can feel the heat still radiating from it and the pain is worse than ever. The stiffness is almost absolute and I know that I’m as good as dead still. There’s no hoping that they’re going to save me or that there’s something inside that bag of tricks we gathered in the vet clinic that will keep me alive any longer than my body will allow. I’m on borrowed time now. I look at Lexi, strangely comforted by the fact that I know I’m still dying. It gives me a sort of freedom to act. “Where’s Greg?”
Lexi points next to the bed where I see that there’s another chair and a little desk that is completely covered with another pile of notebooks and papers that match another pile on the floor. The sight of it is strangely comforting, but I don’t really know what it is that I’m looking at. “He’s been studying since the moment I untied him from that table and got you to the bed,” she tells me with a sort of pride in her voice. I reach out and grab one of the notebooks, flipping through it and finding journal entries that are signed ‘J’. I don’t know what most of the equations are, but the designs in the notebook look like someone was planning on building something extensive and important. There are enormous structures that look like planter boxes with greenhouses built on top of them. I toss the notebook down and look at a map that they’ve found somewhere in the house. It’s marked with dozens of X’s all over Dayton and the surrounding communities.
“This guy Jason had a lot going on,” Lexi tells me with a certain excitement in her voice that reminds me of the determination that had been in our father’s voice before the end. I look at her, not expecting this from my sister. She was usually so cynical and bitter. It’s like letting the truth out has deflated and drained all the hostility from her finally and I can actually stand her for once. I hate that the poison she had inside of her turned out to be what it was, but I’ll deal with it for now. “We found a supply of food that he had stashed away in the basement and all these maps that correspond to detailed notebooks. He lists everything he raided from where, and if there were hostiles in the area. Just from the intelligence reports that he took, we could remain here indefinitely.”
“But it’s so much more than that.” Greg’s voice startles me as I turn and look toward the door where he’s standing with more notebooks in his hands. He limps to the chair next to my bed and sits down in it with a bit of an awkward, pained struggle. Already, looking at his complexion, I know that he’s doing much better. The infection is starting to recede out of him. If he keeps up the antibiotic regiment, he’ll be fine in no time. I like the sight of the two of them healthy and well. It makes me feel like I’ve actually accomplished what I set out to do. “Jason appears to have been some sort of agricultural student,” Greg tells me. “From what I can gather, his fiancée and he moved back here from Arizona State and found the place deserted. While they worked on raiding, he spent his nights figuring out what was wrong with the soil and why the fertilizers killed everything. He hypothesized that the only way to get plant life back was to create new soil. It’s a simple enough process and he has a huge pile of compost in that shed out back. It’s insane, Val, I think he can actually do it.” He pauses for a moment and looks at me with a sad look on his face. “I mean, we can do it. He just warns that we’ll have to make a compound to keep the soil from getting stripped in the storms, but until then, he designed these greenhouse structures that should start doing the trick. It’s incredible really.”
“Wow,” I say to them. I’m genuinely impressed. I didn’t think this was the kind of sanctuary that my father would have sent us to, but I understand now why he did it. Of course it would make sense to send us here. I can’t help but think that if Jason was on the verge of this discovery, then there has to be others out there who figured it out. But maybe not. I think back to everything we experienced to this point and decide that if others had to go through a fraction of that, saving the world wouldn’t have been on their list of priorities. “It looks like he had it all figured out,” I say to them.
“A shame he disappeared,” Lexi says optimistically, but I’m pretty sure that everyone in this room knows better than that. Lexi stands up, pulling her now milk-drunk baby from her breast and heads for the nursery that I’m assuming they set up somewhere throughout the house. “I’m going to go put him down for a nap,” she tells me as she goes out. I catch the lingering glance that Greg and Lexi offer each other before she leaves. It’s full of meaning and purpose and it ruins the mood. I hate seeing them like this now that I know the truth and actually pick up on it.
The moment she’s gone, Greg turns and looks at me. “I’m sorry, Valerie,” he says to me with a defeated, remorseful tone to his voice. I don’t know what to say in return. I’m not ready or willing to forgive either of them. There are certain facts to what has happened and I’m not denying that they exist, but that doesn’t mean that I have to accept them and be happy about them. I can still hold them accountable and feel infuriated about it. I won’t act upon it, but I’m not willing to surrender it just yet. The pause seems to last forever. I don’t know what he’s expecting but after a moment he clears his throat. “We weren’t able to find that oasis that we had hoped for, but I’m pretty sure we can make one. He’s got it all right here, in these notebooks.” I feel like I’m talking to a newborn idealist who has been completely reformed from the man who wanted to stay lurking in a beach house on the dead coast of Florida because it was the sensible thing to do. It’s strange seeing him like this.
“So,” I say finally, breaking my silence, “you actually think that you can do this?”
“Yeah,” Greg says with a huge grin on his face. “I mean, we’re going to have to start with the greenhouses to protect the plants from the storms, but once we get a little more established, we can try and find the equipment to build the compound. With the right ratio and process, I think we can get enough healthy soil to build a whole new world.”
“So what happened to everything?” I ask him. “Why did the fertilizer kill everything?”
“From what Jason has written on the walls and in his notebooks,” Greg turns around and pulls down a poster, revealing hidden writings and rantings that look like they belong to a madman, “He thinks that the fertilizer was stable until it was ingested. Once it was re-deposited as waste, or even in contact with digestive acids from waste on the ground or in manure, all nutrients were stripped from the soil and either absorbed by the plants or washed down to the bedrock. So the soil was stripped of everything healthy and sustaining from the plants, and crippling the soil from being able to bond to other nutrients. With no nutrients left in the soil, and the inability to fertilize to add new nutrients, everything just withered up and died. His compound will essentially ensure that the new dirt is resistant to the super-fertilizer and acts as a means to replace the soil-nutrient bond. All we have to do is create the new soil and add minerals and traditional fertilizers.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” I tell him honestly. I don’t know how they’re going to be able to do all of that, but I hope they get started on it soon.
“Yeah,” Greg shrugs. “We’ve got pebbles and gravel that we’ll mix with the fertilizers from the bags that Jason stockpiled and then mix in the compost. I’m sure I’m going to need to find a hammer and start breaking some rocks, which will be a ton of fun, I’m sure. But in the meantime, he suggests hitting a bunch of locations that he’s marked out on the map. I never even thought of some of the stuff he came up with. He suggests hitting farm supply stores, gardening centers, and nurseries to find a lot of the supplies we’ll need. He even marked out a chemical plant about fifty miles away that should have everything he could possibly need to mix the compound. He had it all planned out, Val. Step by step.”
“Until something went wrong,” I caution him. I’m glad to see him so excited about all of this, but Jason is dead or gone. Unless he’s taking a very long time getting to and from that chemical plant, something bad happened to him. I don’t want the two of them to get killed following in his footsteps.
“Val, I know there’s a lot of history between us,” Greg says to me with a pleading tone in his voice. “But we’ve got to get you better. The moment we start building these greenhouses, the cat’s out of the bag. People will find us and they’ll start coming to us in droves. Word will get out. We’re going to need all the help we can get and we’re going to need you for certain.”
I smile at the thought of that. To think that they’re already building an imaginary future with me in it is a bit comforting, if not a little horrifying. I smile and shake my head. “Don’t worry about it,” I lie to him. “I’ll be fine.”
“Glad to hear it,” Lexi says from the doorway. “I’m going to go prep the truck. We’re making a run to one of the supply markers he has on the map. Jason scouted it out and said that it’s abandoned and only locals would have known about it. I’m sure any previous looters will have left behind the sorts of things we’re after.”
“If it’s still stocked,” Greg tells me as he stands up, “then we’ll have everything we’ll need to get started on the work Jason has lined out. He’s already completed one of the greenhouses out back by the shed.” He puts a concerned hand on my shoulder and I feel slightly less repulsed by his touch now than I did a few days ago. “Rest, we’ll be back in a while.”
“I’ll be here,” I tell them as they leave the room. I listen as they gather up Charlie and head downstairs for the door.
They aren’t gone longer than a few moments before I can no longer resist the urge to cough. I lean onto my side, fighting the pain in my stomach as my whole body shakes and jerks. Covering my mouth, I feel the specks of liquid hitting the palm of my hand. As I pull my hand away from my mouth, still coughing, I see the dark specks. I’m not sure how much longer I have, but it’s only a few more days and that’s being lenient.