Most of the time she was half-awake, but sometimes, she would raise her head, look around, see him without acknowledging him, and then sink back to her delirium. Her zombie movement eerie and frightening. Steve just sat opposite her, watching her carefully, dreading the moment she closed her eyes, died, and then opened them again, green and slitted and immortal. But the zombie never rose, and the coughs continued, even when he tried to sleep, even as the wind eroded the world to oblivion.
Most of all, Steve was hungry.
Counting days in the gray gloom was impossible, one dusty moment identical to every other. The ash swirled and blew. A skyline that zipped past like a rotoscope, showing patterns and shapes that his tired, food-deprived, soot-intoxicated brain spawned at random. He wasn’t quite sure what he was breathing any more, fine dust, air, or just a river of some apocalyptic gas, but it was as hot on the inside as it was on the outside. Only, strangely, he didn’t seem to cough like Lena. The rising of his chest was deep and even, against all the nerdy logic he could muster. His skin had been peppered with this weird fallout, his mouth and nose and eyes itched madly, but his lungs worked and pumped and refused to give in. And Steve lived, trying to figure out a timing system in a world without corners and shadows.
He believed he hadn’t eaten for four days now, but he wasn’t really sure. He remembered reading somewhere that the human body followed a 26-hour cycle when left without a clock, but that worked fine in a lab with plenty of good food, monitors and no wind of death to flail your hide. Four days, four fitful sleeps, permeated with the windy monotony and that soft yet utterly loud cough.
Four days without food, and he was feeling angry. Not weak. Nor was there any pain save for a dull sensation somewhere in his guts. It was survival anger that tried to propel him to rise and seek nourishment, hunt just like our ancestors did. But Steve’s ancestors must have liked computers no less than him, because he refused to leave his island of quiet and wander into the sandpaper sauna out there.
He didn’t want to leave his bunker. He didn’t want to yield the best spot the ruined town had to offer to some other straggler. Worse yet, he wasn’t sure he knew how to find his way back if he left. So he hunkered down, watching Lena refusing to die, listening to her failing breath. The world of dust glided above his head, raining soft flakes, like hot snow in winter.
Five days, Steve counted. Five days, his senses told him. He had tried to sleep again. His eyes woke to a gray nightmare, everything fuzzy and blurry like a bad photograph. Lena was still there, her cough a trumpet of Jericho. Steve flexed his once beautiful hands and realized he was losing strength. Could it have been more than just five days? But then, until now he had never gone more than three hours without food. There was no way he could guess how apocalypse 101 really went.
He needed food. Well, he wouldn’t die of thirst, for sure. His little shelter had its gold mine. A knot of metal piping, bent, cracked, and leaking precious, clean water. Whenever he woke, Steve pressed his lips to the warm length of copper and suckled on the few drops like a mythological Roman beast. Oh yes, he had the best bunker. He was ready to defend it against intruders, if they came.
Lena did come. But she was past caring. She had seen him suckle the pipe but hadn’t bothered to move her body. Steve hadn’t tried to help her. He felt it would do no good. He would just prolong her suffering. And in his mind, he didn’t want those zombie lips touching his water source. In the movies, the infection always traveled through tainted water. Steve knew his stuff well.
But while he may not go bad trying to drink his own urine, he craved for some food, real food. He wasn’t obsessed, but he realized that even the strongest and fattest of nerds would run out of bodily burgers, and he was neither the strongest nor the fattest. His mind refused to give in to this catastrophe. He refused to lie down and die. It was mad, but it drove him, made him blink his eyes open and weather his fate.
He was terribly hungry, but not hungry enough to abandon his little bunker. Not yet.
Six days, seven days, and he knew he would die soon. He had to eat.
Steve looked at Lena. She was dwindling away, slowly, but like the wick of an ancient candle, she kept burning and burning. It was uncanny. Maybe she was a zombie after all. But no. Still, she coughed, made the wind sound more interesting, punctured it with something other than white noise. She hadn’t moved at all. She wouldn’t drink, and she wouldn’t die.
Steve knew she was going to die soon. And he was hungry.
Steve had no gods to pray to, except maybe his Internet idols and the little demons that lived in the computer chips. However, he knew that eating your fellow humans was a bad thing, no matter what. That’s what zombies did. You could be a bunch of pilots stranded in the Andes and it still was enough of a shocker to make into a whole bunch of documentaries. Don’t eat human flesh, period. But that solid, adamant pillar of unquestionable morality was losing its charm. Here, now? What did it matter? Did it?
It was dangerous. The pathogens and whatnot. You could end up having a serious allergic reaction and die. But if you didn’t eat, you just died. Here was the world ending, and he was debating cuisine with his soul. Lena was practically dead. He would be doing her a favor really. Put her out of her misery. Make his and her life easier. She would die serving a higher cause.
Day eight. Screw the pilots in the Andes. This was the apocalypse. This was the whole world ending. He was entitled to some free grub. The wind seemed to agree, cackling madly, then it resumed its boring hot whoosh. The gray snow swirled around him, cloaking everything. He was a man in a flurry infinity, watching his own choices cascade around him.
Steve rose on a pair of wobbly feet and almost collapsed. Boy, was he weak. Was it really eight days or more? Or less? Was he such an office space wuss that he was giving in to hunger after just a few days of suffering? It made no difference. He reached down and picked a sizable chunk of granite in his pocked arm. He tottered over to Lena. She didn’t raise her head. She just coughed, one last time.
Later, engorged on blood and muscle, he felt sick and ashamed, but he knew he would live. He would not let this stupid wind get the best of him. He wanted to live. Reading The Count of Monte Cristo as a child, he had always wondered how someone could survive fourteen years in a cell. And why. Mostly, why. But now he knew. He knew the brutal power of life, and it went beyond any simple human scruple. He had no bloody idea what this gray world would bring tomorrow. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t die like Lena. He didn’t know if he wasn’t breeding radiation disease or becoming a zombie. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was not going to give up. He would live.
Steve leaned against the wall of his bunker and let the world fly past, gray and hot and ashen. For now, he had everything he needed. Water and food and hope. He could sleep now, without that eerie cough to haunt his dreams. And when he woke, it would be another day, another struggle, but that was a distant worry. For now, he lived, and he had everything the world could offer him.
Steve slept soundly, his dreams no longer howling like the wind.
MICHAEL AARON
Julia’s Garden
Michael is a lapsed Taoist of mixed parentage and fixed abode. He can be seen riding bicycles with occasional passengers. His work has appeared in many places over the years, often on purpose. Like the square root of three, he is positive and irrational.
Julia’s Garden was inspired by recent research into the human biome: Our personal collection of microbes, two kilos of bugs that science has only just come to realise is as vital to our wellbeing as a functioning liver or pancreas. Since the birth of germ theory, they’ve been seen as parasites and invaders. Only now are we beginning to unravel the complex symbiosis between us and our gut flora, and we disturb it at our peril.