Prospero's Half-Life (9 page)

Richard ate from a can of cold pasta in tomato sauce and
watched her dig through her treasures. She exclaimed over each
discovery, chattering excitedly over them. Richard paid only a
spurious attention to what she was saying; she seemed to know a
great deal more about literature than he did, and much of what she
said went over his head. He did take notice at books that he’d
actually heard of, however; she pulled a very old edition of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
out of
a hidden pile and he remarked in surprise. She seemed astounded
when she came across a fairly regular-looking hardcover edition of
some novel or another.

“
Algis Budrys,” she said, and smirked. “He had quite a lot to
say about a similar situation”. He shook his head; he had no idea
what she was talking about. That, however, was the only book she
put in her backpack. She sat down shortly thereafter and opened a
can of tuna, wolfing it down hungrily. She seemed disappointed when
it was finished and she eyed the can as though there might be more
inside. She reluctantly placed it aside. She then eyed Richard
speculatively and quirked a smile across her curvy lips.

“
Now I think we have time,” she said mysteriously and all of a
sudden she was across and on top of him, her lips pressing down
onto his with ferocity. Richard was taken aback at first but after
his initial surprise he gave into it with abandon. His hands
quickly found her breasts and she ground her pelvis into him
greedily. She broke away to stare into his eyes.

“
You have tuna breath,” he quipped, and she giggled.

“
True,” she whispered, her voice flushed and breathy. “I guess
you’ll just have to throw me over something in here. I saw a copy
of
Ringworld
on a
table over there. That might be hot”.

“
Yeah?” he challenged her, and tackled her. He got her up to
her feet and then promptly spun her around and over the position on
the table she’d mentioned. Everything after that belonged to the
silent, secret room away from everything, where the dust flew in
thin, outraged clouds as they were rhythmically
disturbed.

EIGHT

By the time
they left the book store the sun was half-way down in the sky to
it’s bed in the west. It was half-visible over the buildings that
flanked them, causing the shadows that shrouded the dead to grow
even longer. They continued to walk through the downtown, although
their pace was much slower than it had been. The smell seemed to
have died down, although Richard was sure that this phenomenon was
due more to his mentally filtering it out than to any actual
reduction in the bacteria festering in the decaying flesh of those
once human. Whatever it was due to, he was grateful for it. He felt
more relaxed than he had been since waking up that morning.

They walked in comfortable silence for ten minutes, and
Richard revelled in the lessened tension between them. They were
each the only person the other had in the whole world, after all,
and it would be best to keep relations light and easy between them.
Richard thought about reaching out to take her hand but decided not
to push things.
All in good time
he told himself.
Time is
really all we have, after all
.

They passed by a couple of convenience stores and Richard
thought about stepping inside to see what might be available for
looting. When he got close, however, he could see that the
interiors of the store were smashed and torn. It would take a long
time to sift through the debris to find anything useful, and
Richard judged that they only had maybe four or five hours of
sunlight left. If they hadn’t found anyone by then, they would have
to find somewhere to hole up for the night. He turned away from the
stores with faint regret; they had enough food in Samantha’s pack
to last a while, but it would give out eventually, and Richard
definitely wanted to restock their supplies before it came down
to
eventually
.

He smiled and
then even chuckled a little. The idea that their supplies would run
out was a laughable one, when he thought about it. Even if the
stores had been looted by a desperate group hell-bent on getting
what they thought they needed before dying or blowing town, there
were houses. 180,000 people had lived in the city before the plague
blew through; the homeless rate being as negligent as it was,
almost all of those people had lived in some sort of house or
apartment. The most common thing that could be found in the
cupboards of such a place were canned goods; even if some of the
homes had been looted (and Richard knew that some of them had to
have been, by this point) not all of them could possibly have been
looted, especially if the population was as reduced as it seemed.
He let his shoulders drop a little more. There would be time enough
to go searching through darkened kitchens and pantries later. Right
before St. Paul Street curved around to the left, there was a
franchised pita restaurant. The sullen, rancid smell of gone-over
meat and vegetables wafting out of the crashed-in front door made
his decision final. The stomach turning-smell made him want to stay
in the street as much as possible.

After the
curve the character of the street changed. The buildings on either
side of the street were by and large bars, with the odd coffee shop
or bank thrown into the mix. The reek of alcohol was heavy in the
air; the hunks of former cars thinned out but the corpses remained,
littered with slivers and chunks of glittering, jagged glass. Logos
remained on some of the larger glass pieces, symbols of vodka, gin,
vermouth, rye. The aroma was sharp and it assaulted Richard’s nose;
from the expression on her face he saw that it was doing the same
to Samantha. There would be no stopping along this stretch.

“
God, why would they have smashed all of this?” Samantha asked
aloud, looking around at the sheer amount of liquor bottles lying
busted in the fading sunlight. She sounded disgusted. Richard
shrugged.

“
It’s the end of the world,” he said heavily, suddenly aware of
how ridiculous the phrase sounded. “People are very different when
faced with a crisis situation”. He thought back to the confused,
deranged phone call he’d had with the store up on Hamilton
Mountain. The orgiastic violence that had been alluded to through
the crackling connection had shocked him at the time, but now, in
the sober light of day, he started to find a sort of rudimentary
understanding. When the whole thing was spiralling down the drain,
why not go out with a smashing whirlwind of destruction? Looking
around at the stretch of bars on this part of the street, he
realized that this was exactly what had happened. The sick and the
scared, in need of distraction and dissolution, had been drawn to
these places. They’d gotten drunk, and then they’d gotten
violent.

He shook his head.
The state of
nature
he thought grimly,
nasty, brutish, and short
. Where was that from? He reached back to his university days,
thinking it was probably from some philosophy course or another. He
puzzled over this for a while as they walked solemnly passed the
still remnants of what had, by all observations, been the mother of
all chaotic riots a few nights before. They stepped lightly,
watching for dangerously angled shards of glass, and stepped
gingerly over the sprawl of bodies here. Richard was convinced that
one of them would twitch and get up, like a surreal image out of a
horror film, but the corpses lying in the street were as still as a
rural midnight.

The street
widened into a large four-way intersection; kitty corner to their
standing position, the land dropped away off of the road into a
deep, forested ravine. The Niagara escarpment rose in the distance,
on the other side of the ravine, and out of the escarpment a
single, blocky tower rose into the sky. Samantha halted in the
street and pointed out to the tower.

“
Schmon Tower,” she noted, “Brock. I wonder if we might find
people there”.

Richard
stopped beside her and looked out into the distance. The street led
away to the left, crossing the ravine by bridge. He tried to judge
the distance to the tower rising up on the horizon; it seemed like
an awfully far way to travel. He judged that she was probably
right, though; if there was going to be anywhere where survivors in
the area might gather, it would be the university. For large scale
shelter, food, and booze, if nothing else. It would take them at
least a day to make it there, though. Probably a little more than
that. He looked around with apprehension. There weren’t any
buildings that he would be comfortable taking up shelter in; they
were all office buildings and shops – open to the world and
uncomfortable besides. There were houses along that ravine, though,
if he recalled the area correctly, and they might be able to raid
them for some more supplies if they took that way.

“
All right,” he said. “That might actually be the best
plan”.

“
Might
actually be?” she asked
dangerously, but he ignored the tone.

“
I think we should,” he began saying, but he would never
remember what it was that he was about to suggest. From behind
them, they heard the sounds of running shoes hitting the pavement
at a rapid pace. They both whirled around at the same time and
nearly ran into each other.

A woman in a
dark green sundress was running towards them, waving her hands. Her
wavy blonde hair seemed dishevelled but it might have just been
from the running.

“
Hey, wait!” she was yelling repeatedly as she ran. Richard and
Samantha looked at each other with blank expressions, and then
simultaneously began to walk towards the newcomer.

“
Hey,” the woman greeted them as they got closer. She seemed to
be a bit out of breath. Her fair skin was covered in a thin patina
of sweat, and her dress was stained slightly at the armpits. She
was pleasant enough to look at, Richard thought appreciatively. She
had a bit of a long face but some really knockout blue
eyes.

“
Howdy,” he replied, a little awkwardly. Now that they had
found someone, he wasn’t sure what the protocol was. Do they
exchange names? Survivor stories? Maybe just talk about the
weather? He was saved from the awkwardness of trying to figure this
out by Samantha.

“
Hi,” she said briskly. “I’m Samantha, this is Richard. We were
out by the hospital and decided to come down here today, just to
see if we could find anyone”.

The woman’s
eyes went wide at the mention of the hospital.

“
Oh, wow,” she replied, swaying a little. Richard caught a waft
from here and realized that she was quite drunk. “You were out by
the hospital? That’s fucked up. Ronnie was out there and he says no
one can even get near it”.

“
My apartment’s on the other side of a building across the
street,” Samantha explained carefully. By her expression Richard
saw that she had already discovered the woman’s intoxicated
state.

“
Fuck, lucky deal,” the woman said easily, and then shook her
head. “My name’s Callie, there’s a bunch of us up in the Chili
Pepper. We saw you walking by and Ronnie said we should go tell you
we were up here. You know, so you don’t have to be
alone”.

Richard looked
at Samantha. He felt nervous about this invitation but she seemed
to accept it with equanimity. He decided that he would follow her
lead on this, since finding other people was the reason they’d come
down in the first place. He decided to try to get a few questions
in before they followed this drunk woman up into the top floor of a
bar.

“
Who’s we?” he asked, trying to keep the firmness out of his
voice. Callie looked at him blearily.

“
Well, uh, there’s me, Ronnie, Mark, Meghan, uh, Jaden,
Melissa, and two girls whose names I don’t even remember, they just
kind of showed up a few hours ago. Kind of like you
guys”.

Richard
nodded. “OK, what’s the plan?”

Callie’s
expression was confused. “The plan?”

“
Yeah,” Richard prodded impatiently. “The plan. What are you
guys doing up there?”

Callie spat
out laughter in a dissipated manner. “Doing? We’re getting fuckin’
wasted, man. What else is there to do right now?”. She laughed at
this and the sound reminded him of a woodpecker.

“
After that?” he pressed. Callie looked at him
oddly.

“
You sure are insist...ten...insistent,” she stuttered,
hiccupping. “Just come get drunk with us. Are you doing anything
else right now?”

Samantha
shrugged her shoulders.

“
Not really,” she replied, and Richard gritted his teeth. There
was something wasteful about this situation, he felt. His neck
muscles became tense. Callie saw this and gave him a dirty
look.

“
You need to relax,” she brayed, and motioned to Samantha. “You
coming, girl? I’ve got an open bottle of vodka I need help
finishing”.

Samantha
grinned. “You just sold me,” she joked, and began walking away with
her.

“
Hey, wait!” Richard exclaimed, and when neither of them paid
attention to him he began to run after them, cursing under his
breath.

They walked
back to the Chili Pepper, a garishly painted two-story bar that was
the last drinking establishment on the street. As they approached
the front entrance, Richard looked up and saw that there were a
number of people at the window on the second floor, looking down on
them. He wondered blackly how he had missed them.