After The End Page 4

  My eyes close, finally. I don’t dare to move anything else. Not until Garlind does. Then I’ll know it’s safe. He told me to play dead and that seemed to work out for me. I shouldn’t doubt his instincts anymore.

  I can still hear the bear as he makes his way through the dense foliage. The leaves part for him, the shrubs shrink down under his feet, and his giant paws thud on the dirt. I lie listening for a very long time until I can’t hear it anymore.

  Garlind sits up. “I think it’s okay now.”

  It takes me a few more seconds before I’m confident enough to sit. When I do, there is no trace of the bear anywhere. Garlind gets up and stretches. As if he’s just woken from a good night’s sleep instead of escaping the clutches of a deadly animal.

  “What about if he comes back?” I ask in a whisper. I can’t do anything that will attract his attention again.

  “He won’t. We should be fine for the rest of the night. We will move on in the morning.”

  Should be fine. He didn’t say we would be fine. There is a huge difference between the two words. A plan forms in my mind and I quickly believe it’s the right thing to do.

  I rifle around on the ground until my hands grasp around my backpack. I heft it onto my shoulders. “I’m going home,” I declare. I start walking in the same direction we came from earlier. All I have to do is follow our path back and I’ll find the bunker.

  “What do you mean? You can’t go anywhere,” Garlind protests. “It’s dark and we’re going in the opposite direction.”

  “I’m going back to the bunker. My parents were right, it’s too dangerous out here.” I should have listened to my instincts in the first place.

  I’ll find more food.

  I’ll find more gas.

  I’ll live out my days in the metal bunker where giant bears and any other mutant animals can’t get to me. It was a huge mistake coming into the outside when everything I had inside was so safe and calm.

  My feet stomp on the group as I head home. Garlind is quickly beside me. He gently grasps my wrist to stop my charge forward. “You can’t go back, Maisy.”

  “Yes, I can. It’s too dangerous out here.”

  “It was just a bear. You can’t throw everything away because of one bear.”

  That’s what he thinks. “He could have killed me.”

  “But he didn’t. You played dead and he left you alone. You did the right thing and it worked.”

  I yank my wrist from his hand and turn away. “Only a fool gets themselves into the same stupid situation twice. I don’t belong out here. The bunker is my home.”

  “Maisy, please.”

  The pleading in his voice stops me momentarily. I spin to face him, our gazes locking. “Give me one good reason why I should stay.”

  He deflates, all the fight gone from him. “Because I don’t want you to go.”

  Something in my heart stirs. It’s the way he says it, like it would really hurt him if I kept going right now. I don’t want to hurt Garlind in any way. He’s been nothing but kind to me and that beautiful face of his should never be sad.

  Maybe running back home now isn’t the best idea. I can’t really imagine saying goodbye to this boy and never seeing him again. And for what? Sitting alone in a bunker for the rest of my life with no food or gas?

  “The bear really scared me,” I mutter, looking at the ground.

  “It scared me too,” Garlind admits. “But you leaving scares me more. We’re going to encounter animals along our way but I’ll protect you. I promise.”

  My gaze lifts until I can see his brown eyes glinting in the moonlight. He says so much with his expression. I believe him but I don’t want him to protect me. I want to protect myself.

  “Will you stay?” he asks.

  I bob my head and start walking back to our camp. We don’t say another word while we curl up together. Sleep isn’t going to happen, not with that bear still out there, but it’s nice resting anyway. Garlind is warm and a steadying force behind me. I appreciate his arm around my waist.

  Morning peeks over the top of the trees and brings light to the darkness. I get up and stretch, scanning our surroundings in great detail for any signs of a mutant animal. The forest appears to be nice and quiet. It’s going to hide any secrets for a little bit longer.

  “Are you ready for another long day of walking?” Garlind grins but I know he’s not joking.

  I’m anything but ready. I barely got any sleep and my feet are still sore from yesterday. I’d rather curl up in bed and not get up again for a few days. Out here, that is impossible. Walking on is our only option.

  Besides being eaten by a bear, of course.

  “How many days do we have to walk before we reach the ocean?” I ask. My mother always said it was such a beautiful sight. I can’t wait to see it for myself.

  “Quite a few. I’m not sure exactly how many.”

  “We’d better go, then.”

  I hitched my backpack on my shoulder and followed Garlind in the same direction we were headed yesterday. Leaves crunch underfoot while shrubs get tangled in my legs. It’s wild out here. Everything is overgrown and taking over the earth. I can only imagine exactly how it looked before the world ended.

  “Do you know where we are?” I’m suddenly very curious. My parent spoke of different cities in the country. I would love to see some of the ones they talked most fondly about.

  “This used to be a place called Chicago. We’re just on the outskirts and will be coming into the main city in a little bit.”

  Chicago. That’s where my dad was from. He grew up there and went to Columbia College. He said you could do anything in that city—from touring art galleries to climbing the highest tower and peering right over the edge. He made it seem like a very interesting and busy place.

  “How will we know when we’re in the main city?”

  Garlind chuckled. “Oh, we’ll know.”

  I get nothing more out of him than that. I have no idea how I’m supposed to tell the city from the outskirts. Everything here looks exactly the same—green. We walk on anyway while I examine everything closely to find the main city.

  A couple hours later and I know what Garlind meant. Standing in front of us are the tallest buildings I’ve ever seen. Admittedly, the tallest structure I’ve seen is the Bunker—which is half-buried underground. These towers reach up to the sky so far it makes my neck hurt when I look up at them.

  Large vines have tried to take the buildings. They creep up the sides and embrace the brick and concrete tightly. They’ve busted through windows and the weight is causing some of them to crumble. This looks nothing like the pictures I’ve seen. The foliage is winning this war, not the manmade structures.

  That’s for sure.

  “This is Chicago?”

  “In living color,” Garlind replies. He sweeps his arms out to the side, encompassing the whole thing. “We have to be careful here, everything is likely to crumble at a moment’s notice.”

  “We’re going in?”

  “Just to find some supplies. Cities are goldmines for stuff. Not much food, because it’s all old and horrible. But rope and blankets and clothes. I found this backpack in Rapid City.”

  “What do we need?”

  “Everything.”

  Garlind heads confidently toward the city. It’s so quiet here that it’s eerie. I keep expecting a bear to jump out at me at any moment. I’m not sure I could play dead a second time.

  The buildings are scarier than the endless green foliage. There is evidence of the people that used to be here. We pass a large tangle of vines that have grown around a bicycle. A window has writing on it about a holiday called Halloween. Seats sit in a café, awaiting their patrons.

  Everything is here, but it’s also not. People have stepped out and given the landscape back to the earth. It’s surrendered to the elements where they are thriving. I couldn’t imagine taking back this city even if we had an army of hundreds to clear the foliage.

>   I try to imagine what it was like beforehand. Without all the vines, the buildings would have looked spectacular. People would have bustled along these streets, always in a rush. I bet it was never this quiet before.

  My parents described the world before to me many times. They would tell me stories about their childhood and how they were free to roam all over the world without fear of radiation or mutants. I always nodded along to their tales, but in reality, I could never really imagine what it must have been like. It was a way of life too foreign to me to really be understood.

  As we walk through the remains of Chicago, I can see glimpses of the world they described. I can imagine people walking these streets as they travelled to and from jobs. They would go home to the houses we saw on the outskirts of the city and live in families with their children.

  There were apparently billions of people before. Billions, as in hundreds of millions. I have seen three people in my entire life. They probably interacted with more people than that just getting up in the morning.

  I know I’ll never see the world my parents described, but I feel a little bit closer to understanding now. If this whole experience is for nothing, at least I have that. I’ll always be grateful to Garlind for this excursion—even if we are mauled by mutant bears in the near future.

  “We’ll need to go inside one of the buildings to scavenge,” he says. He’s doesn’t walk around in wonder like I do. He’s all business, a boy that’s seen all this before.

  “Which one?” There are several to choose from.

  His eyes scan for something I can’t see. They finally settle on one across the street. He points. “That one.”

  I follow him as we step over thick vines and shuffle through piles of decaying leaves. Garlind yanks on the door of a building that has to be a hundred floors high. He puts his whole shoulder and body into the effort but the class door doesn’t budge.

  He picks up a rock and throws it at the glass.

  It shatters.

  Not even the vines crawling up the side of the building can protect the fragility of the door. I wrap my jacket around my hand and help Garlind pull out the shards of broken glass. We make a hole big enough for us to squeeze through.

  It’s not as dark as I was expecting inside. All the foliage does block out a lot of the sun but there are still rays of sunshine beaming through the gaps. The foyer is expansive and it was probably impressive once.

  “How do we go up?” I ask. The building is tall, we are not.

  “There should be stairs around here somewhere.”

  I don’t want to admit that I’ve never seen stairs and I’m not entirely sure what they are. My parents may have mentioned them because the word seems familiar, but I can’t place it with an object in my mind.

  Garlind finds a door with a little squiggle picture on it. It opens much easier than the main front door. We go inside to a very darkened room. I can barely see Garlind as he grips a railing attached to the wall and takes a step upwards.

  These must be stairs.

  I remain close as we ascend up the stairs. If I lost sight of him here, I might never be able to find him again. Dad said the cities were sometimes called concrete jungles. I understand what he means now. Instead of trees, there are buildings, but it would be easy to get lost in them just the same.

  We find another door after we’ve been walking for at least ten minutes. My thighs are starting to burn from the constant steps upward. I wonder how the people that worked in this building used to do this several times a day? Didn’t they get tired? What if they forgot something and had to go back down again?

  The room we enter from the stairs has some light streaming in from the windows. I wander over to the glass and peer out. We’re up high—higher than any tree. The city spreads out below for as far as I can see in all directions. It is an expanse of brown buildings covered in the green vines. I don’t notice any of the details until I concentrate and look harder.

  Straight streets separate the blocks, creating harsh slashes in the colors. Not far away is a small canal that snakes through the buildings. Concrete paths guide the water along in neat rows. I wonder if people rowed boats along that canal once? What did they think of a strip of water in amongst all this concrete?

  “There nothing here,” Garlind declares, jerking me from my imaginations. “We’ll try a few more floors before moving on. You never know, we might still get lucky.”

  I nod like I know what we’re looking for. I hope food is high on his list but I can’t imagine finding any in these offices. When people fled for shelters, surely they took everything edible with them? I know I wouldn’t leave any behind.

  Garlind does a sweep of the next floor and finds nothing again before going up another sets of stairs. This time, when we step inside he stops abruptly.

  A few second later I understand why.

  I can hear voices.

  Chapter 6

  Garlind grabs my arm and pulls me into a small office. The top half of the walls is made up of windows so we duck underneath the desk. The voices are near, too near for my liking.

  I can’t quite make out what they are saying but I can identify that it’s a male and female. That much I can tell from my limited experience with other people. Their tones are friendly toward one another, so they aren’t obviously fighting.

  Garlind and I exchange a glance. He makes a shushing sign with his finger over his lips. He doesn’t need to tell me twice. I will always follow his lead when it comes to all things outside the bunker. He has had a lot more experience than I have.

  The voices hush after a few minutes. They remain quiet long enough to have us peeking over the desk. The reason for their abrupt silence is obvious once we spot them in the office across the hallway.

  They’re kissing.

  I know I should look away, but I’m fascinated. The only interaction I’ve seen between two people before were my parents. They occasionally kissed and cuddled, but nothing like this. The word ‘passion’ comes to mind and I’m sure it’s fitting to use it with this couple.

  I want to know what it feels like to kiss. What it would be like to be held like the boy is holding the girl. Would I enjoy it? They seem to be liking it very much.

  My cheeks redden as I observe them. This is an intensely private moment that we’re watching. They deserve some privacy but I can’t bear to give it to them. This couple is fascinating. They must love each other very much.

  Garlind taps my arm to steal my attention away. He points toward the door, indicating that we should leave. I know we must, but I have seen so few other people that I’m loathe to move on. Yet there is something that feels shameful in watching them.

  I nod and crawl along the dirty floor on my hands and knees. We are almost at the door when I accidently kick over an empty trashcan. It skitters across the floor and makes far more noise than I expected it to.

  Garlind and I both freeze. We’re caught between making a dash for it or remaining exactly where we are and hoping the couple were too busy to notice the noise. A right answer isn’t apparent.

  In the end, we don’t get to dither for too long. In only a few seconds, the couple stand in the doorway and block it. They each hold a gun pointed at us. I’ve never looked down the barrel of a shotgun before and I can honestly say it’s one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen.

  “Don’t shoot us!” I plead.

  “What are you doing here?” the man asks. “You’ve got two seconds before I start firing.”

  Garlind speaks before I can. “We are just passing through and were on our way out. We wish you no harm. We’ll leave you alone and you’ll never see us again.”

  The couple exchange a glance. The woman gives him a slight nod. “Where are you going?”

  “To Charleston.”

  “Why?”

  Garlind replies quickly. “To find a Generation Ship. We’re hoping to be accepted into one so we can leave earth.”

  They exchange another glance, but this tim
e it’s accompanied with a shrug of their shoulders. The woman speaks this time. “What the hell is a Generation Ship?”

  “May I stand and explain?”

  “Fine. Just don’t try anything. My finger is on the trigger and the safety is off.”

  Garlind stands and I follow. We both place our hands in the air to prove we’re not reaching for weapons. I try to be invisible so they don’t focus any attention on me.

  “Generation Ships were used for evacuation when the meteorite came. They are still in the sky, just outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, people still live on them.”

  “You’re lying,” the woman spits out. “I’ve never heard of these ships. I haven’t seen one either. You’re trying to trick us. Do you think we’re so dumb we won’t see it?”

  “I can assure you, I’m telling the truth.”

  My gaze is glued to the girl’s finger on the trigger. A finger that is now shaking and could so easily press down to fire a fatal bullet. The barrel is so close to Garlind there is no doubt it would hit its target easily—even with the shaking.

  I have to do something. “He’s not trying to trick you,” I start. “He actually believes in these ships. I’m not so sure but he seems like a nice guy so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. At the very least, he’s getting us to the beach so we can get out of all this wilderness.”

  Her finger slips back to rest on the barrel. She speaks to her boyfriend. “What should we do with them?”

  He purses his lips and then puts the shotgun down to face the floor. “They seem harmless. Come through and we’ll sit down and have a chat like civilized people.”

  The boy leads the way while the girl gestures for us to go next. We follow through into the room they were making out in and sit on tables. My feet swing slightly as I can’t touch the floor.

  “I’m River and this is Clare,” the boy says. He points to himself and then the girl. His gun rests on his lap, still in easy reach but not so menacing now.

  “Garlind and Maisy,” Garlind replies.

  “Where did you come from?” River asks.