After the Fall Read online

  “Why is it any different with Taylor? Because she’s new here? Because maybe she’s had a hard time? Seems to me that should mean we make more of an effort, not less.”

  Duncan felt the pride coming off Buck before he saw it on his face. Kate smiled at him, and Duncan knew he had done right. Just like before with Zeke. It felt good. It made him feel like a man.

  “Okay, Duncan. We’ll try,” he said, squeezing Duncan’s shoulder. “But I can’t guarantee she’ll want our help.”

  Duncan nodded happily, Kate’s smile and Buck’s fatherly grin warming him.

  “Now,” Buck said, eyeing both Kate and Duncan closely, “are you both okay? Nobody’s hurt, right?”

  It took Duncan a second to register the change in tone and topic.

  “We’re fine,” Kate said reassuringly. “Nothing we couldn’t handle. Though I’m sorry—”

  “No. No apologies. Not from either of you,” Buck said firmly. “Zeke was out of line. It won’t happen again.”

  It was Kate’s turn to squeeze Buck’s shoulder, telling him it was okay. Duncan nodded his agreement. Zeke had been a bastard since Duncan had arrived on the farm. He and his pals, Billy and Dean, had been there since the beginning, having worked for Buck before the plague. They were therefore close to indispensable to Buck, knowing the farm nearly as well as he did.

  They were hard workers and hard drinkers, with hard tempers and hard ideas about what the world owed them. Duncan had heard them grumble about it often enough. But for months they had been getting worse. They barely tolerated anyone, instilling fear through intimidation. They made up their own work detail, never shared a table at meals, slept in the lofts of the main barn instead of the dorm…which was just fine with Duncan. Still, when they were around, the air seemed thicker somehow, more menacing. Duncan heard their half-whispered comments about him, and about others, always insults designed to keep people in their place. Duncan never took the bait, although he always felt a little bit worse about himself for it. But it was the smart thing to do, the right thing to do, to keep the peace.

  But tonight that had all changed. Zeke had crossed a line, and he had crossed it with Kate. Everyone knew Zeke had a thing for Kate, that he had since day one. Kate had always rejected him, as nicely as possible but in no uncertain terms. Everyone on the farm knew Kate was gay, in the way that everyone always seemed to know everyone else’s business. Not that it mattered. Buck had made it clear to everyone that all were to be treated equally, that biases and prejudices were the only things not welcome on Burninghead Farm. If Duncan was being honest with himself, at first he had wished Kate was straight, if only because he had a bit of a crush when he first arrived. But he mostly saw Kate as a big sister now, so her being gay did not matter to him all that much. Kate was special, warm and caring in a way that made Duncan feel safe and loved. It did not hurt that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  Zeke, however, did not see Kate the way Duncan saw her. Zeke seemed to view Kate as a piece of meat, and the fact that she did not want him seemed to make him want her all the more. Duncan thought, though, it was Kate not wanting any man that had pushed Zeke over the edge. Tonight, Zeke had tried to force the issue, by whatever means necessary. But Duncan—and everyone else, it turned out—was not about to let that happen.

  “So, Taylor wanted to ride to your rescue?” Buck asked with a touch of a wink.

  “Buck,” Kate said warningly but without menace, a delicate blush gracing her cheeks. Duncan laughed, as did Buck. Kate’s raised eyebrow put an end to both men’s folly.

  The three of them relaxed, watching the party resume its previous swing, enjoying the reality that they were alive, healthy, and for the most part, happy.

  Chapter Ten

  I don’t remember leaving the barn, or getting back to room 39, or sinking into the bed. I’m sure I ran, though I hope I waited until I’d gotten out the door to flee in earnest. All I know is I now find myself staring at the moon through the window above my bed, not sure whether the patterns of light filtering in are caused by leaves from the tree outside or the dirt smudged across a wide swath of the glass. I just pray no one follows me. Not that I pray anymore.

  When I was a kid, I went to Catholic school. It wasn’t like my folks were super religious or anything. My mom was Polish Catholic, meaning that her parents were big with church on Sundays and big with the guilt. Up until my dad married my mom, he was Protestant. That’s what his dog tags said, anyway, although his mother once told me he was actually raised Baptist.

  As I got older, I started to notice my parents never went to church with me. My grandparents—the Polish ones—always took me. One summer day, I decided that I wanted to go outside and play instead of going to church. My mom said no. I asked her why I had to go every week but she didn’t. She told me she didn’t go to church because she and God didn’t get along too well, and hadn’t for a long time. I told her that I didn’t get along with God too well, either, and so I shouldn’t have to go to church. Seemed like a foolproof plan to me. She smiled at me and said, “Taylor, there is nothing wrong with your relationship with God. Someday there might be, and you can decide for yourself whether you want to keep going to Mass. Until then, you go to church with your grandma and grandpa.”

  So I went. I didn’t really understand her logic—I was still pretty stuck on the whole idea about me having to go even though she didn’t—but she was Mom and, therefore, she was right. I went to church and I kept going. Right up until Mom died. I was thirteen. After that, I didn’t get along with God too well, either. I decided my presence was no longer required in God’s house. My dad agreed.

  My issues with God eventually evolved into an issue with all things church-like. For a number of years I considered myself a recovering Catholic, struggling to overcome the church’s brainwashing of me during my childhood. Sinners go to Hell. Everyone’s a sinner. Everyone’s going to Hell, unless of course you do exactly as your friendly neighborhood priest tells you, and you donate at least ten percent of your wages to God. Because God really needed my money.

  Whatever problems I had with the church, as an adult I did manage to work on my relationship with God a bit. God still really pissed me off sometimes, and I had no clue what in the hell he was thinking, but I was comforted by the notion that he was there, in my corner, supporting me. I held on to that belief even as the world went fairly literally to Hell and everyone around me started dying.

  The first person I knew to get sick was my boss. It was still early then, and we didn’t know that the flu that had started to go around was anything more than just another bug. She had been working too hard, was constantly traveling back and forth across the country for meetings, so when she showed up at work one day after a particularly grueling trip, it wasn’t a big shock that she was sick. But, trouper that she was, she kept coming in to work. Until one day she didn’t. I remember the last e-mail I got from her, joking about how the flu was the best diet ever and how she really didn’t mind it so much except that her once-glossy hair was now just a dull, lifeless lump on her head. Two days later, her mom called the office to break the news that she had died.

  At first, it was just a few people dying, but within weeks of my boss’s death, the death toll was in the hundreds. People started wearing face masks in public, if they came out of their homes at all. Offices started closing, telling their employees to work from home if they were well enough. The federal government ordered all offices closed until what was now being called a pandemic plague had passed. The most powerful city in the most powerful nation in the world became a ghost town.

  Somehow, I remained healthy, some kind of natural immunity to the virus. There was no cure. The scientists said it would eventually burn itself out, that we just needed to stay home and wait. But waiting proved impossible. Hundreds of dead turned into thousands. Hospitals were overwhelmed, not only because there were so many patients but because there were hardly any doctors left to treat them. Many of the
m had gotten sick themselves. The ones who hadn’t were home trying to care for their own families. The same was true for the firefighters, the police. The president declared a state of martial law, but it was already too late. There weren’t enough soldiers reporting for duty to keep order. Looters ran rampant, stealing everything from baby wipes to televisions on which to watch the horror unfold.

  Many people fled the cities, thinking that if they could get out into the country the plague wouldn’t find them. They were wrong, of course, but I understood their need to try. I stayed in the city. Everyone I knew had gotten sick by then, colleagues around the city, coworkers from my office, the guys I played pool with on Monday nights. Some had died, and the rest were on their way. I wasn’t in a relationship then, having broken up with my last girlfriend two years earlier after catching her in bed with a girl that worked at the coffee shop we went to every morning before work. I suppose I am blessed in that I didn’t have to watch someone I was in love with die.

  I moved in with my best friend and her husband, mainly because there was safety in numbers. She and I had known each other since college. For a week, the three of us drank wine and played cards and waited for the worst to pass us by. How lucky we were, we thought, that the three of us were immune. Then they got sick, too, and so I stayed to take care of them. I made them soup and wiped the sweat from their brows and emptied their bedpans and read them stories about distant lands and happily ever after. Then they were gone, and I had no reason to remain any longer. I spoke to my parents that night. I could barely hear them over the static, but they begged me to come home. I left the next morning. Three weeks later, a terrorist bomb destroyed what was left of Washington, DC.

  But even then, I still believed it would all be okay, that God was still present in the world, that he had not abandoned us. I lost that faith forever on a small farm outside of Pittsburgh.

  When I escaped that place I left God behind, along with some good people who didn’t deserve what happened to them. Now it is just me and Mugsy against the world, and that’s the way I like it. It has kept me alive. It has kept me sane. And now, out of nowhere…

  What the fuck are you doing, Taylor?

  I slam my fist against the wall beneath the window. In less than twelve hours, I have damn near broken two of the three rules that have saved my life so many times.

  Keep to Yourself. Don’t Get Involved. Jesus, Taylor, how hard is that?

  I’ve held to those rules for months. Pitiless months of walking and scavenging and surviving, of numbing myself to the bloated bodies and the rotting remains of humanity. Empty months of saying as little as possible, to myself, to others, even to Mugsy, who is the closest thing I have to a friend. Relentless months of keeping moving, of keeping to myself, of not getting involved. The people I meet are just stops along my way, means to accomplish my own personal end. I stay a few days in some places, maybe a week if there’s enough food and water to make it worth my while, and then I move on. I don’t need anyone, except my family. I don’t care about anything, except getting home.

  Home.

  My whole family lives in Asheville. Dad, stepmom, stepbrother, and stepsister, who I long ago stopped viewing as step-anything. In-laws, niece, nephew…all have great big lives they’ve built from scratch there, in the place we grew up. I’m the black sheep, the odd woman out who left home to go to college and returned, only to move halfway across the country in an effort to forge some kind of life, something more than I grew up knowing. I moved around, changed jobs, built a career, only to abandon it midstream to go back to school. Through it all, my family supported my choices, accepted my mistakes, and forgave my absences.

  In my mind I watch my dad, proud and smiling, cracking jokes at the kitchen table over a cup of coffee and a deck of cards. His whole life he’s done for others, spent two-thirds of his life driving an eighteen-wheeler thousands of miles from home, when all he has ever wanted is to be able to see his family every night. My whole life he has loved me, even when he really didn’t know me. I know that now. He and I spent a lot of years trying to get to know each other after Mom died, trying to understand each other without anger or defensiveness or recrimination. And when we were finally able to do that, I knew I had the best man I could ever hope to know on my side.

  He’s what I have spent five months trying to get back to. I owe him that much. Owe him, and the rest of my family. I tell myself they are alive and well and waiting for me, but the truth, the one I have buried beneath layers and layers of lies, is deep in my heart I know they are gone. But the lie sustains me, gives me purpose. The lie is the only thing I have left to live for. The lie is all that matters. Or at least it was. But now…

  Now I’m wasting time, breaking the rules, risking everything. For what?

  I slam my fist against the wall again, harder this time. I want to scream. I don’t know these people. I certainly don’t owe them anything. I’ve been through plenty of places with nice people who needed help way more than anyone here, but I didn’t break my rules for any of them. I hadn’t even thought about it. I took what I needed, what was offered, and moved on. Like always. That is who I am, who I’ve become. That is who I need to be. That is how I will get home.

  These people don’t need me, and I sure as hell don’t need them.

  Then why can’t I stop thinking about them? About her?

  I turn the previous twelve hours over in my head. What is it that has gotten to me so quickly? What is it that has gotten to me at all? I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, burying my head in my hands. I am so damn tired. Tired from so many things, not the least of which are these…complications. For the first time in what feels like an eternity, my wall is cracked. Someone has gotten in.

  And it isn’t just her. It is all of them.

  Damn it all to hell.

  I spring off the bed, pacing back and forth across the cold, bare floor. I am a tiger in a cage, a mental patient prowling the hallways looking for imaginary exits through steel bars I can’t see but can feel tightening around me. Kate is in my head, smiling that sweet little smile, laughing in the sun, talking to me and caring for me and challenging me. I picture myself with her, nestled in the grass watching the children play, relaxed and laughing. Images flare in my mind, of soft words and holding hands and gentle touches and sweet kisses and—

  Jesus, Taylor, what are you, a fucking Hallmark commercial? Since when do you want any of this?

  I feel the whole damn place crawling under my skin. Dunk and Buck and the kids and even Mrs. Sapple, all making me feel something other than numb.

  Just focus on what brought you here. Focus on getting home. That’s the only thing that matters. None of these people mean anything.

  I stalk back and forth in the moonlit room, hoping the shadows will crawl across the floor and swallow me.

  Just do what you always do. Keep moving.

  I reach for my backpack, shoving the few possessions I have inside. I grab Mugsy and settle the strap across my chest before the faint light sneaking into the room snaps me back to reality.

  It is night, and I am exhausted.

  I sink down onto the edge of the bed, my pack slipping out of my hand. I feel every hour of the last five months pressing down on me, trying to drive me into unconsciousness. When was the last time I slept, really? I have never felt safe enough, warm enough, comfortable enough, to let myself go. Not even if it meant an easier road ahead. But tonight I feel the pull of it, the overwhelming need.

  With arms of concrete and rubber, I manage to drag Mugsy off my back and myself more fully onto the bed before collapsing down into the soft pillows. I don’t remember ever having been this tired. I start to wonder if it has been there all this time, just waiting for an opportunity to sneak in and claim me. I suppose it has. It really has been a long five months. I guess I deserve one night of oblivion.

  I will sleep, for once, taking advantage of the opportunity to do so. But in the morning, I will go, and I will not look back.
No matter how much I might want to.

  As I drift off, I notice a rhythmic tapping at my window. My last thought before I fall unconscious is that Kate was right. It’s raining.

  Chapter Eleven

  The crisp predawn air bites into my skin as I creep along the side of the dorm, Mugsy’s comforting weight pressed against my back. I search for signs of anyone who could derail my escape. There are none. In the hazy shadows that fight the dawn’s first rays, I am alone.

  A chill assaults my skin, last night’s rain having chased away the mild air of yesterday. This is the real September making her presence felt, letting me know she is in charge, not me. If she chooses to grace me with her benevolence, I am grateful. If she chooses to rain her wrath down upon me, well, that is her choice. This is her world now, not mine. I am simply a squatter.

  I try to ignore the ice forming in my veins as I leave the cover of the two barns and walk the open field toward the footbridge spanning the shallow creek that slices the farm in two. My breath turns to mist as it merges with the morning air, suspended briefly in cotton puffs before dissolving into nothing. I focus on the path before me, on freeing myself of the mess I have gotten myself into. This farm is just a stop along the way home. Nothing here matters. My stepmom’s chicken noodle soup, my niece’s latest dance routine, my sister’s fascination with 1930s gangsters, my dad’s hopelessness with anything electronic, those are the things that matter. My determination warms me against the cold.

  The farmhouse looms at the top of the hill. I cross the footbridge carefully, hoping the elderly wood won’t creak and give me away. I manage to clear the bridge with little noise, and thank my newly svelte frame for the preservation of my stealthy departure. Fifty pounds ago, that wood would have groaned like a MINI Cooper trying to carry an elephant.

  The sun is starting to break over the farm’s eastern edge, stealing the cover of night. I quicken my pace. As I near the farmhouse, I know it is the last major hurdle between me and freedom. The house is peacefully dark, every window consumed by a still blackness. Seeing no signs of life, I creep quietly but confidently past the front half of the house.