A Cold Black Wave (21 page)

Three days passed
as they waited.  They kept watch slept together in the cold nights.  Josh’s body recuperated slowly.  His face was returning to normal, yet still hued with deep yellow and bruised skin.  His broken leg he no longer thought about, it would be a long time before he ever found use of it again.  The splint helped him move about, but it was at a labored pace, even when using a stick he had ventured outside to procure one afternoon.

Their immediate problem was water.  They were completely out.  Their lips were cracked and sore, and they often found themselves dreaming or talking about water.  The very thought of it gave them moments of elation.  The intense desire of the body to seek water overwhelmed their thoughts, and as each hour passed, it was the only thing that mattered.

Leah had found a stairwell in the back of the warehouse that led up to the roof, and she was oftentimes up there, crouched and hidden behind an electrical box and using Josh’s binoculars to scan their surroundings.  Josh banged on the metal railing of the stairs to get her attention, and she came down to meet him.

“What is it?”  She asked.

His lips were white, cracked, and red with blood.  “Anything?”

“No.  Not a cloud.”

He cast his eyes down in thought.  They both knew what they needed to do.  He scratched his beard.  “You need to ...”

“You come with me. That’s what…”

“I’m not arguing about this.”

She scoffed, “I’m not either.  We go out together.  That’s it.”

He nodded reluctantly.  “Fine.  Okay.  Let’s go then.  Get the rifle.”

Leah slid through the warehouse door, and she turned and helped Josh through.  It was late morning and the sun burned especially hot on them, their skin dry as paper.  Josh was able to walk by himself now, aided by his stick.  This allowed Leah to jump ahead and search around.  She’d peek into old storefronts, houses, and down alleys.  Any water they would find would likely be brackish and undrinkable.

As Leah searched, she became bolder and would disappear for longer stretches of time before returning to the street to check on Josh.  He stayed close to the buildings, using his left hand to push off the wall and his right to put pressure on his walking stick.  He made good strides this way.

All the buildings were empty, either gutted by fire or looted.  Some of the houses and structures, however, appeared untouched.  Tables and furniture sat where they were left when it had all ended.  Leah would sometimes emerge with cans or bottles, but everything inside them had turned rancid or evaporated.  After dispensing with canisters filled with black sludge, she gave up.  She wiped her hands on her pants and came to Josh, exasperated.  She stood across from him and they stared at each other knowingly.

“We should leave the city.  We can go back.  We know there’s water out there.  We can forage, hunt … but we need water.”  He said, coughing dryly.

Leah looked behind her, down the street, then up at the surrounding buildings.  Back?  Josh was right, but that was a long way to go.  There must be something near.  They stared at each other, hoping the other one would suggest a different idea.  Leah looked to an eight story apartment complex across the street.  “Let me go up and look around one more time.”

He nodded.  As she hurried across the street, Josh slid down against the wall and took the chance to rest.

Leah tried opening the entrance door but it was locked, or stuck.  She messed with the handle a few times before kicking the door, breaking it at the hinges.  She tried again, and the rusted metal bolt broke off and the door nearly collapsed to the floor.  The air inside was dry and musty.  It was dark with only a ray of light angling in from a window on the 2
nd
floor.  Dust swirled and danced in its path.  The stairway was right in front of her, so she made her way up.  As she did, her footsteps echoed against the silence, and she tread lighter in some cautious way, as if she would somehow wake the inhabitants if she didn’t.  The sound of her movements only reminded her of how alone they were, and she hated the feeling.

The stairway ended on the eighth floor.  She’d have to find the way up to the roof.  To her right, a hallway extended to the other end of the building some one hundred feet.  Again, she walked cautiously.  Dust covered everything.  A stuffed toy laid face-down on the floor was covered so thickly with brown dust it looked as if a mold had grown over it.  Doors lined the hallway on both sides.  One was ajar and she felt some strange desire to look inside.  She tentatively pushed the door until it was fully open, revealing the skeletal remains of two adults sprawled on the floor, arms by their sides as if they had collapsed where they stood.  Their clothes and jewelry hung loosely on their bones.  She quickly shut the door and moved on.

When she reached the end of the hallway, there was another door with a sign on it, and it too was slightly open.  It was a tightly cornered stairwell and she followed it to the top.  She exited out onto a gravel-laden roof where she was able to see the layout of the land in every direction.  The buildings in this area weren’t particularly tall, save for a few.  The biggest still lingered off in the hazy distance, looming and beckoning them with silent promises.

She pulled the binoculars up and looked around.  There was nothing.  No fires or smoke, no moving cars or any kind of objects in motion whatsoever.  The constructed world here was dead.  It was a stark contrast to the vibrant and seemingly untouched world they had landed in.  This place felt sterilized of living organisms, save for the rampant weed that grew where nothing else could.

Leah moved to the other side of the roof and peered down at Josh.  He looked up and waved, and she waved back.  “Anything?”  He called, his distant voice carrying up to her.

“Still looking.”

She took to the binoculars again.  She knew Josh should be up here looking, as she wasn’t trained in any way to find structures that might hint at providing water.  He had told her to watch for elevated, stand-alone metal containers they could investigate for clean water.  She had seen standing water a few times, gathered in pools, but appeared undrinkable.  Nothing else.

As she slowly scanned the city, with its broken windowed houses and sagging rooftops, she saw something move abruptly across a street, disappearing behind a wall.  She swung the binoculars back to the spot, but didn’t see anything else.  She’d briefly put the binoculars down to get a greater view, waiting patiently to see any movement, before putting her eyes to the glass again.  Nothing.  She wanted to believe it was her imagination.  It was roughly four blocks away from their position.

Leah glanced to Josh, who was tossing pebbles into the street.  Nervous, she decided she had enough and would head back down.  She clamored down the stairs, no longer caring about the noise she was making or of the corpses she passed along the way.  When she made it out of the complex, she was out of breath and Josh instinctively got to his feet.

“What’s wrong?”  He asked, wincing as he leaned on his stick to stand.

“We should go back.”

“You sure?  You didn’t…”

“There’s nothing.  We could be searching for days before we found anything. Let’s just go.”

Leah hastily grabbed him to help him move faster and nearly dropped him on his face.

“Careful!  Just let me do it, I’ll move faster.”

They walked briskly, returning down the long street they had spent half the day exploring.  Leah glanced nervously behind her, seeing things when she did, but too afraid to stop and make sure it wasn’t her imagination.

Josh stopped her by putting a hand out, “What do you keep looking back for?  Did you see something?”

She watched now, squinting to see.  There was nothing.  “No…I don’t…”

“Are you sure?”

“No.  I don’t know…”  She ran her hands over her face to shake the fog.  They were tired, hungry, dehydrated.  If she didn’t see anything, how long could they keep going like this, running and hiding from things that don’t even exist?  Even if they found water, then what do they do?  How many more machines were out there looking for more people to kill, how many more could they fight off?

Josh tried calming her down by placing a hand on her shoulder.  “Look at me.  We’re going back.  We’ll get water, food.  We’ll find shelter and wait for them.  If they’re looking for us, they’ll find us.  Okay?”

A block behind them, a spider-legged machine crawled off the wall of a building and onto the street.  Its front legs extended forward, pointing towards them as if it were trying to assess its target, and then put them to the ground again.  Leah could sense it, and slowly turned her head back down the street.

“Josh,” she whispered with a terrifying breath.

Josh turned and saw it standing there, a black dome at its center mass, and six metallic legs extending outwards.  Something within the dome moved and gave off dim transmissions of light.  It ran back up the wall and onto the ceiling of a building and disappeared.

“Josh!”  She cried, gripping onto him.

“Let’s go, inside, go!”  He pushed her forward towards a corner store.  Its windows were shattered, but it was the closest shelter and they stepped through the glassless frames of the windows.  There was a counter in the back of the store, and behind it was a door leading to another room.

Josh slammed his shoulder into the door and broke it down with his second attempt.  It was a dead end, an empty storage room filled with nothing but dust and empty containers.

Leah stopped abruptly, refusing to go inside.  “I can’t!”

“Yes!  Go.  Come on!”

She reluctantly complied, and as she passed by he pulled the rifle off her shoulder.

“What are you doing?”  She asked incredulously, grabbing his shirt to try and stop him from going back outside.

“I’m going to kill this goddamn thing.  Get inside and stay there!”

“Josh!”

The synthetic legs thudded on the roof above them, moving rapidly across and then back again, searching.  It would return to the street again at any moment and find them.

He put a finger to his lips.  “I love you,” he whispered.  He reached over and kissed her, leaving her to the room.  He then took a position behind the counter and leveled the rifle to the street.  The metal tapping of the legs disappeared.  It was on the ground somewhere, searching.  Josh could hear it skittering just outside of the building, and the familiar hum of its electronic mechanisms running.

Josh pointed the rifle towards the sound, tracking it as it moved just outside the walls.  Then it stopped.  Josh waited for it to move again, to come into view as it passed in front of the broken windows of the store.  Minutes passed, but it no longer moved.  The hum continued, so slight that it was only perceivable in the complete silence.  He kept his rifle aimed at the last spot he heard the machine, and wondered if he should try and hit it by firing through the walls.

A quarter inch cable with a domed tip appeared from around the corner.  Its snaking appendage curled slightly around, pivoting to scan the entire room.  Josh aimed and squeezed the trigger, blowing it into pieces.  This sent the machine into a frenzy as it clamored from behind the wall and into the store, its legs wrapping around the corners as it pulled itself in sideways.  Josh fired and continued firing, steady, aimed shots that shattered the black dome.

Ink black smoke billowed out from the dome and filled the store with choking gas.  Josh dropped the rifle and covered his mouth, but it was too late.  He collapsed to the ground, falling through the broken door where Leah waited.  His body convulsed as he tried to drag himself to safety.  Leah screamed as the smoke followed him in.

Before it reached her, Leah held her breath and pulled her shirt up to cover her mouth, rushing forward to grab Josh.  She put her arms under his and locked her hands behind his back, hoisting him off the floor as far as she could and pulled him through the store and towards the door.  The smoke burned her eyes and nostrils, and she knew if she pulled in one breath of it, they’d both die there.