The Remaining (20 page)

I want more than a simple statement that I believe. I want to belong to someone.

I want to stop trying to rationalize my existence away. I want a relationship.

I want to hear something and have it bring some life to this soulless, meaningless world we live in.

I want a Spirit that doesn’t fail me or flunk me or frustrate me but rather fills me.

I want to experience the feeling of being on my knees and knowing the meaning. Of falling before my Maker and knowing and realizing that he wants me and he desires me and he really, truly loves me.

God loves me.

God is waiting. For me.

I know this now and all I want is to finally be at peace.

And so it comes. The rush. The fall. The breakdown.

Another empty, ransacked room.

Another dead end.

Tommy feels something and stops for a moment, looking around the white hospital room with an empty bed and even emptier cabinets.

“Do you hear that?” he asks Jack.

It’s obvious that the screaming is coming from outside. Jack and Tommy hear the voice and instantly they recognize it. They rush to the window and tear at the cheap miniblinds.

Dan . . .

He’s outside on the lawn of the hospital. Screaming and shouting at the sky. Waving his fist.

“I hate You! You hear me?”

Tommy can hear him fine and knows if there’s a God above he can hear Dan too. Not that he’ll pay any attention. Not that he’ll care.

But others will. Others like those weird winged devil creatures out there.

“No,” Tommy says.

“Stop!” Jack screams at him through the glass. “Be quiet!”

Dan falls to his knees. They can see he’s crying. Screaming and spitting out his words. Furious.

Skylar’s dead.

Tommy knows that.

But where are Allison and Sam?

Dan is depleted, destroyed.

“Do You hear me?” he shouts. “Do You? Are You even listening to me? I’m right here. Come on.”

But he just kneels there, this lone figure on the grass in his tux pants and stained white, tattered shirt resembling what his heart must feel like.

Tommy and Jack continue to scream at Dan but he doesn’t hear them or doesn’t care.

Much like God must be toward Dan’s complaints.

Then Dan’s angry face turns to something else. Sorrow.

“Please, God. Just take me.”

Dan cries and mumbles some more words that Tommy can’t hear.

“Oh no,” Tommy says.

Everything about Dan suddenly changes.

The anger subsides.

The wrathful look turns to a look of peace.

Dan is mumbling something under his breath.

He’s asking God to save him. To forgive him. The whole thing.

They continue to pound against the window. Dan needs to get off the lawn and back in the hospital. He needs to get out of clear view of anybody and anything.

No no no this is not how salvation comes not like this not this way.

A breath. Then Dan turns and sees them for a moment.

No please God no not
 
—

Then something sharp and long and curved slices through Dan’s chest, spewing blood all over the white of his shirt. His body is crushed against the lawn.

The guys scream.

The creature hovers above Dan, giant, sickly, coiled, black-gray, and grotesque.

Dan’s face hangs just above the grass, his mouth spilling blood, his eyes lifeless, his heart and soul gone.

Screaming doesn’t help. Pounding on the windows doesn’t help.

The thing
 
—the hovering huge beast
 
—whips back up into the sky and takes Dan with it.

Tommy bends over and wants to cry and wants to throw up.

Dan.

Gone.

Skylar.

Surely gone.

Leaving Allison and Sam.

“We have to get back down there to the girls,” Tommy says.

Jack is not with him anymore. He’s there but he’s gone. Just like Tommy feels. Just like everything.

“Come on, Jack,” he says. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”

They don’t have much of anything left.

Allison.

She can still be saved and they can still get out of here and find whatever kind of relief is left in this godforsaken, God-forgotten place.

Running.

The hospital a cemetery full of sleeping zombies.

The halls deserted shadowlands.

A trip and a fall and back up again.

Everything blurry. Everything heightened and messy and broken.

Tommy turns and takes the stairs two at a time.

He remembers everything.

All the laughter and the smiles and the late nights and the talks and the dancing and the drinking and the
dreaming. So much joy. So many moments. Stuck now in a place just like this. Empty rooms full of empty cabinets. Ransacked and stolen and taken away. Chipped, fractured, pulverized, destroyed.

Everything filling his mind and his heart, not going away and not leaving him.

It’ll be with him forever.

However long forever might be.

The body in the bed is the first thing Tommy sees. It doesn’t move and doesn’t look good. He touches Skylar and knows for certain.

“She’s gone, man,” he calls out to a breathless Jack. “She’s gone.”

Jack is next to him.

It’s too much it’s way too much and there’s more there can’t be more right there shouldn’t be.

“Where are the girls?” Jack asks.

“Maybe they went to look for us?”

Please yes.

“Allie!” Jack’s beginning to lose his voice from all the screaming. Yet he continues to call out her name.

“We have to find them,” Tommy says.

He doesn’t want to leave Skylar here alone in this room, but he knows they need to leave the dead in order to find the living.

They head to the front of the hospital, where the
sliding-glass door is still slightly open and broken. The dead bodies are just like window dressing now. It’s odd how you can get used to things so quickly in this life. The overturned chairs and the papers and the empty supplies on the floor and . . .

What is that?

Next to a broken mirror is a phone.

It’s Sam’s phone.

Tommy breathes in. Surely this can’t get worse. Right?

“No, please no, no, no.”

Surely they’re outside waiting on them.

Surely. Yes, right. Surely?

Jack is down the other hallway and calls out, “She’s not here. Allie’s not here.”

For the first time since everything started, Tommy feels defeated. He picks up the phone but he knows. He already knows.

His fearful heart feels something new.

It feels crushed like the glass he’s stepping on.

He sees the phone in his shivering hand. Then slowly he turns it on to see what it might reveal.

But Tommy already knows and is already prepared.

He shuts his eyes for a moment.

His fingers open up the playback app on the smartphone and find the video that waits there. Tommy pushes Play.

It’s Allison, running, the phone jerking from side to side as Sam runs beside her, the ground flashing by beneath them, the cries and screams of the girls, the sounds behind them. Awful sounds, scurrying steps following, following, until there’s a thud. The camera slamming to the ground.

Suddenly the camera is turning and then stays put only to show a blur and a figure in violet being shaken and then thrown into a wall behind a counter.

Tommy has no more air inside him. He feels like choking but can’t breathe.

“What did you see?” Jack says behind him. “Where are they? What’s wrong?”

Tommy scans the room without saying anything. Then he sees the cracked wall and the torn debris around the counter. He goes over there with Jack following.

Allison’s body is mangled in the corner beneath the crushed wall she landed on. Streaks of blood line her face and her arms and her dress.

Jack vaults over the counter and goes to her side but then hesitates. It’s almost as if he’s afraid to touch her.

He kneels and begins to wail, screaming out her name.

Tommy just stands there in an almost dreamlike stupor. “Allison,” he says in disbelief. “This doesn’t make sense.”

He goes over to hug both Jack and Allison but Jack fends him off with a curse and violent reaction. “Get away from her,” Jack shouts. “I should have never left.”

Tommy slumps to the floor as he watches Jack blubber, not wiping away his tears. It’s a striking, haunting thing, this full-of-life, full-of-answers jock becoming a whimpering mess whispering to his dead girlfriend.

Dead.

Dead.

Tommy fights his own tears by doing something. By moving. By searching the room.

Sam was with her.

He knows she’s gotta be somewhere.

“Sam’s not here,” Tommy says. “She must have run or something. We have to find her.”

Jack is cradling Allison’s broken and bloody body. His tears fall off his face onto hers. Tommy doesn’t know where to go. He doesn’t want to leave Jack, not like this. He’s afraid of what his friend might do.

There’s a sound behind him and Tommy turns, fearing the worst.

Then he suspects something else.

“Sam?”

He moves toward the overturned reception desk.

“Sam, is that you?”

Sure enough, the girl is huddled behind the desk, her eyes closed, her body shivering. When he touches her she looks and then jumps up and latches onto him with a fierce hold.

“I hid
 
—I was hiding
 
—it didn’t get me
 
—it was chasing us
 
—I was so scared
 
—that thing
 
—where’s Allie?”

“You’re okay now.”

Sam’s questioning look. Jack holding Allie’s body. Dan speared by some
thing
. Skylar dead and left alone.

It’s too much.

Too much.

Tommy leans on the desk and begins to cry. His thoughts race and hurtle and rush over each other.

He’s got a prayer he wants to pray.

God do You want me then You come find me and take me. Do it and take me and take everything You can because I’m not going to just lie down and let You do it easily.

Come on.

Come on can You hear me?

Sam’s hand is on his shoulder as his tears burn his eyes and mess up his cheeks.

Do You see me do You hear me do You know how tired I am of hearing of
You?

I’m not a bad guy.

I’m not a mean soul.

I’ve done some good things and some bad so what do You want?

Why did You leave us all?

Why did You even bother?

What sort of thing are You trying to tell me?

Tommy wipes his eyes and then covers his face with wet hands.

Yeah I’m alone and yeah I’m terrified is that what You want me to say?

Do You want me to admit that You’re there? That I’m afraid? That I acknowledge You doing all of this every little bit?

What more?

Your Son and Your Spirit and all of that stuff I haven’t heard about since leaving Sunday school?

I don’t know anything more. I’m tired and I’m weak but I’m not going to just give up.

He looks at a distraught Sam, who stares at him and looks afraid. Then he glances over at Jack.

Come find me, God.

Come grab me.

If You want me then come and crush me down like You’ve
done with the rest of this insignificant world. Like You’ve done with everyone close to me.

Crush my body and soul.

Do it and end this all.

Of course, nothing happens. Tommy gets control of himself. He knows they need relief. Physical and mental and emotional and every kind of relief they can find.

“We have to go,” he tells them in a restrained voice.

“No,” Jack shouts back. “I’m not leaving her.”

Jack is as delusional and upset as Tommy.

“Jack,” Tommy says, “you’re my best friend and you know I won’t leave you. But we do need to leave. Now, let’s go.”

“I’m not leaving her again! Just get out of here.”

Tommy stands his ground. “No.”

He climbs over the counter and tries to help Jack stand up. But his friend only shoves him away.

“Leave us alone,” Jack shouts. “I mean it.”

Tommy keeps trying. “She’s gone, man,” he tells Jack.

But Jack doesn’t want to hear it and needs to lash out. He stands and attacks Tommy, sending them both to the ground as he begins to punch Tommy’s head. Tommy covers his face to defend against the blows, and Sam comes over and tries to stop them. She pulls Jack off Tommy.

“There’s nothing else out there that I want,” Jack says,
more tears cutting down his cheeks. “Nothing. I’m staying with her.”

“Then I’m staying too.”

Tommy crawls over the counter and collapses into a chair.

For a few minutes there’s just silence. Then Jack moves over the counter and walks toward the entrance. “Let’s go,” he tells them.

Tommy doesn’t hesitate. He simply follows his friend outside with Sam walking next to him.

There doesn’t have to be an explanation. Not in this hell, this madness. Nothing makes sense. Nothing.

Jack lost himself but he’s back. For the moment. He’s back to trying to battle and beat this thing.

Tommy’s battling too.

As they step outside in the fading light of day, Tommy looks up to the sky, wondering if God heard his prayer.

Wondering if God cares.

“You think we’ll be hanging around ten years from now?”

Dan’s question is unusually melancholy but it’s because he’s unusually drunk. It’s the night of his bachelor getaway and we’re looking out over the shimmering skyline of Vegas.

“Absolutely,” Jack says.

He’s had his share tonight too.

“Dan’s gonna get married and then Jack will and I’ll be forced to come to Vegas all by myself.” Yeah I guess I’ve had a little too much too.

“Dan won’t be able to come,” Jack says. “Skylar won’t let him.”

“Jack won’t be married,” Dan replies. “He’ll be working here.”

“What about me?”

They laugh at my comment.

“Good luck to whoever marries you,” Jack says.

“That’s not nice.”

“You’re too much of a thinker. You’re gonna kill your wife with questions.”

I can only laugh at Jack’s unusually honest comment. “Yeah, maybe. But what about you? You’re never gonna settle down long enough to even have a wife.”

We spend a half hour joking around like this until Dan becomes serious. “I’m gonna miss you guys.”

“We’re not going anywhere, are we, Tommy?”

“You’re stuck with us the rest of your life,” I tell him.

“The rest of your life,” Jack says in an ominous tone.

And it was true. Dan was stuck with Jack and Tommy. They just didn’t know the rest of Dan’s life would be so short.

They didn’t know a lot of things.

Memories sneak up and find Tommy. Strange memories. Lots of them. He can’t shake them the same way he can’t move too quickly. He and Jack and Sam are exhausted and confused and careful.

The sun fades. But at least it’s still hanging up in the sky. At least there’s that.

The sights are still there for their small group to see. A dead body hanging on to the edge of a car door, as if it
were about ready to get out of the vehicle when boom. The big thing happened and the body was just left.

The streets are all abandoned. They don’t pass any moving souls. Everything is empty, broken, desolate.

This isn’t the dream people always told Tommy about. The whole thing about growing up and growing older. About pursuing your dreams and passions once you’ve gotten your diploma and left college. Finding the right work and the right woman and the right winning plan for your life. This whole end-of-the-world scenario really doesn’t fit into the plans. They never told him about this.

Nobody once uttered a single word about it.

Tommy walks and sees everything gone.

This isn’t happening.

But he is still here and this
is
happening.

The smoke swirling all around him is making the fading sky even more black-and-whited-out. Bodies can be seen. The dead watch sightlessly from the street, from cars, from corners, rotting away like trash from a McDonald’s.

I’m not here.

But his legs are moving and aching. His back and neck and forehead are sweaty. His mouth is dry and thirsty. His heart is empty and depleted like his bank account used to be in his college days when he’d drink his cash away. He wishes he could go back and have one more rowdy night. One more raucous outing with his friends. But they are mostly gone now.

I’m not here.

That Tommy
 
—that smiling guy so smug and so smart, the one videoing his friends’ wedding
 
—that guy is gone. Forever gone. In his place is this angry, self-serving, surviving soul.

But me and my video recorder are still here. That’s right. Still here.

The world drains out and starts to get dizzy and delirious. But he keeps them moving. They keep moving.

Maybe there’s hope ahead. A fire pit in the dark. A smile in the blackness.

He turns and sees Sam, the white-haired Goth he initially wrote off. She’s got fight left in her. And that’s good. She’ll need that.

They will all need that.

Who knows what tonight and tomorrow will bring. It surely won’t be anything good.

Soon the sun is gone and darkness hovers around them. And hope
 
—whatever tiny morsel of it might have hidden deep inside Tommy
 
—now seems long gone like the sunshine.

Ominous, unnatural clouds have started to form in the skies. Seeming to follow them. To shadow their trek through the city, whatever remains of Wilmington.

“Are we going to the Cape Fear Bridge?” Sam asks while they walk.

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “Once we get there, we should be okay.”

Tommy notices Sam playing around with her phone.

“There’s something important I want you to see,” she says.

Jack is still leading the way, several yards in front of them, not talking or looking or worrying about them.

“Let’s get to the bridge first,” Tommy says.

They move along a street, then cut down a flight of stairs leading to the riverfront. They can see a trash can burning on the walkway with several survivors standing around it. Nobody looks at them and they don’t stop to talk.

They climb another stairway back up to the road and soon find themselves walking in the middle of an off-ramp. A car in the distance is burning. They hear noises near the car and then can hear a fight taking place. A group of men are stomping all over some poor soul.

Tommy and Jack rush over to help. The orange and red streaks of fire light their way but it’s hard to see what’s happening and who’s who.

A gunshot fires and the group of men disperse. Tommy finds Jack on the ground. His head is bleeding from one of the men bashing him with something. Tommy helps Jack get up and together they rush back over to where Sam’s standing, trying to stay safe.

The other man stands up, the one who was being beaten, and manages to raise the sign he was carrying.

Tommy reads it.

Repent
 
—The Day Of Reckoning Is Here!

Tommy is about to offer the man some help when his eyes become large and he shouts out, “Repent!” as blood drips from his mouth.

Insanity. Everything is completely insane.

They leave the man behind as they keep moving.

Soon they can see the Cape Fear Bridge and the relief center just beneath it.

“There it is,” Tommy says.

“It’s really there,” Sam says.

Jack is holding his bloodied head and isn’t walking as fast as before. Tommy knows they need to get to the relief center.

Then maybe everything will be okay. Even for just a short while.