Dating After the End of the World - 3

Roaring sirens, beeping horns, and the rumble of traffic are no longer the sounds of the city. It’s mostly quiet these days, and when it’s not, you know something’s amiss—like right now.

I push the drapes aside only a sliver or so and peer out the living room window. Across the street, a woman stumbles along the sidewalk, yelling, “Hello? Is anyone there? I need help. Where am I? What’s going on?”

Her cries of confusion echo, bouncing off the rows of townhomes lined up one right after another. In a different life, I would have helped her. But in this one, I know she’s merely being used as bait to draw out someone like me, someone who hasn’t been affected by the virus—or whatever it is.

I look down at the raised skin on my forearm—a pale purplish scar shaped like a set of human teeth. After I was bitten by an infected, I thought for sure I was a goner, but somehow, I was one of the lucky ones. I started getting really sick twelve hours after I was bitten. It felt like my brain was on fire. I was sweating buckets. My vision blurred. My head felt like it was in a vise, ready to pop. But at the twenty-four-hour mark, my fever broke, and I felt fine again.

I’ve learned the virus affects each person differently. I’m not sure why, but I know it does. Some, like the woman roaming the street or Ms. Klein, my patient at the hospital that night, lose all their memories, a total brain wipe. About twelve hours after infection, they become a shell of a person, a body with no sense of purpose or belonging. I call them Nomes —stands for no memories . I don’t know what other people call them, because it’s just been Nate and me since it all started. Actually, he calls them Losers because they lost their memories, but we’re not on the same page with that name.

“What’s going on out there?” Nate whispers from the kitchen.

“It’s a Nome,” I say, briefly looking at him. He stands in front of the stove watching a pot of water, waiting for it to boil. His shaggy hair is slicked back, and he sports a beard that he somehow manages to keep trimmed despite the world having ended—the one we knew, at least. As soon as the water begins to gurgle, bubbles bursting into plumes of steam, he pours two cups of rice into the pot and covers it with a lid.

My gaze returns to the poor, confused soul roaming outside our building. She stops suddenly, staggering in place as a pack of biters emerges from a courtyard through a broken gate. Their skin is covered in rashes and lesions, making them appear almost like burn victims. Their clothing is frayed and dirty, covered in blood and human remains. They don’t speak. The only sounds they make are a mix of labored breaths, raspy grunts, growls, and snarls.

“Hello?!” she says, unsure of who or what is approaching her.

The creatures plod toward her, some faster than others. If this woman had the foresight, she could run, but she doesn’t know who she is, what they are, or what’s happened to this world. As soon as they reach her, they claw and bite at her flesh, shredding it with ease. She barely gets out a scream as she’s dragged to the asphalt. Four of them dive headfirst into her stomach, like it’s a trough set out especially for them, unraveling her intestines from her center. A deep-crimson pool seeps into the cracked pavement. I carefully slip my hand from the curtain, letting it close and settle back into place.

“This area is getting worse,” Nate says, watching the pot on the stove. He doesn’t have to see what just happened to know what happened. It’s a common occurrence these days. “We can’t stay here,” he adds.

Here is Nate’s apartment, nestled in a four-story building in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. Even before everything happened, I hadn’t lived with him long enough to feel like it was mine too. The top two floors are his, and so far, we’ve been able to go undetected. The skylights in the living room and kitchen provide light during the day, so we keep the shades drawn, further concealing our existence. It’s better that no one knows we’re here, because the only ones we can trust are ourselves. At night, we’re careful, sticking to the rooms without windows and only using a single flashlight or a candle. We keep quiet too. Nate’s downstairs neighbor fled, so between her food supply and the one I kept stocked (just in case), we’ve been able to survive thus far without venturing outside. But we won’t be able to keep that up for much longer. The flat-screen TV hung above the fireplace and all the lamps and fixtures around the living room and kitchen are just that, lifeless fixtures. The power stopped working about a week after everything happened. I was surprised it lasted that long. The smell of rot from the refrigerator and freezer took days to get used to, but we did—because apparently, you can get used to anything.

“Casey! Did you hear me? We have to go.” Nate is now right in front of my face, gripping both of my shoulders, his eyes darting back and forth, searching mine for a response.

“I know we do. But where?”

“What about your dad’s place? Didn’t you say he—”

“No,” I cut him off before he even begins down that path.

“But you said he has like a compound, some sort of bunker. You two prepped for something like this.”

I regret telling Nate about my dad and his compound. It was day twenty of us being locked in silent isolation. I was going stir crazy, and I’d gotten into a bottle of whiskey—well, more than gotten into it. And then I told Nate everything, everything I had been hiding from him about my past and my upbringing. He hasn’t dropped it since I brought it up. For him, it’s salvation. For me . . . I don’t know what it is. I’m not even sure my dad is still alive and well. I know he prepared for the end of times, but was he really prepared for whatever this is? I’d call it a zombie apocalypse if it weren’t for the Nomes. Those I can’t make sense of.

“We’re running low on food, and it’s too dangerous here. Your dad will have supplies, right? And you said he lives in the middle of nowhere, Wisconsin. Less people means less danger.”

“But it’s not safe to leave,” I say, shaking my head. “And it’s too far away. We don’t know the conditions of the roads or what the outside world is like. We’d probably die trying to get to my dad’s place. Plus, I don’t even know if he made it. You remember how confusing it was when this all started. It’s not worth the risk . . . at least not until it’s our last resort.”

“Look around, Casey.” He pulls away and gestures to the dimly lit living room. It looks like we’re just having a quiet night in, but it’s been forty-two days of quiet nights in. “This is our last resort. We’re sitting ducks, and eventually someone will find us, someone we don’t want to find us.” Nate lets out a heavy sigh.

He’s right. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. But right now, we have enough supplies to last us three weeks, four if we ration. That’s a long time to survive in an apocalypse. I can’t guarantee we’d survive another day if we ventured outside.

“Casey,” Nate says.

I look up at him, meeting his gaze. I know why he wants to leave. He’s scared. And when you’re scared, you run. Or in my case, you hide.

“We really need to consider leaving.”

“Okay.”

He tilts his head, squinting at me. “‘Okay,’ we’ll leave?”

“No, we’ll consider it.”

The water boils over, sizzling against the hot stove. It’s too loud. Nate dashes to the pot and removes it from the flame, muffling a cry of pain as he drops the pot, the handles having gotten far too hot.

My body tenses up, and I sit still for a moment, listening, making sure the noise didn’t draw any unwanted attention. Satisfied with the quiet, I stand from the couch and tell Nate I’m going to use the restroom, hoping that will table the “let’s leave the city” conversation for the time being. He’s preoccupied with cleaning up the mess, so he doesn’t acknowledge me.

In the bathroom, I reflexively flick the light switch, but nothing turns on. I still haven’t gotten used to that. A flashlight lies on its side, wedged between the wall and the faucet. I click the on button and a beam of light bursts out of it, illuminating most of the room. After peeing, I empty a container of rainwater collected from the rooftop into the toilet tank and yank up on the chain. Gravity forces the urine to flush. Too bad it can’t do the same for what the world has become.

As I stand in front of the mirror, a darkened, strained reflection stares back at me. My long brunette hair is oily from weeks of being unable to wash it properly. My cheekbones are more pronounced with part of my face hollowed out due to sudden weight loss. I can still see the blue of my eyes even in the darkness, but the color is fading, just like every other part of me. The woman in the mirror is becoming less and less familiar—and one day, I fear I won’t recognize her at all.

“Shit!” Nate yells.

I’m already shushing him as I race down the hall, back into the kitchen, where I find him partially bent over, wincing in pain and gripping his hand.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” he says in a strained whisper. “I cut myself.”

I want to yell at him for being loud, but instead I grab a towel and wrap it around the nasty cut on his finger.

“Are you okay?”

He nods several times.

I’m still worried about the noise. I’m always worried about the noise. It can attract biters or, worse, the burners. I call them that because all they want to do is see the world burn. They’re the ones I’m scared of. When everything went to shit, some people took it as an opportunity to let the world devolve back into a primal war of winner takes all. At first, I thought they were also infected by the virus. But they weren’t. They had just lost their humanity, or maybe they never had it to begin with. Without law and order or societal norms, there’s nothing they fear and nothing that’s stopping them from doing whatever the hell they want. They’re fueled by greed and desire. Over the past six weeks, I’ve seen them use Nomes as bait to draw out biters or people like me and Nate, people just trying to survive. And God knows what else the burners are using them for. It’s like hell showed up on earth, and they decided someone needed to be the devil, so it may as well be them.

“Can you get the first aid kit?” Nate whispers.

Before I can respond, three loud knocks pound against the front door. My blood runs cold. This is why I’m always worried about the noise.