The Cast Shadows of Fear

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. He gestured for her to the space beside him and, as she did every week, she raised her hands up to the glass and pressed her face to the window pane. Her breath formed milky white clouds on the glass and she used her index finger to engrave a peace sign – a relic from Before – on the window.

The old man only allowed a sliver of exposed window to open on the views below, but it was the last window on the entire campus not covered with black tape. The only window without shards of weaponized glass glued to its sill. She let him place an arm lightly on her scrawny shoulder and awkwardly placed her head against the crook of his arm. She watched the light hairs on the back of his hand dance in the small shaft of sunlight.

She wondered if her father would stand like this with her, if he were still here.

The old man and the young girl peered down together at the burnt remnants of the quad – the faint remains of terrorized students, now dust, whispered screams in protest of their abrupt fates. No one in the survivors' group knew what had occurred here – not even their leader, the Dean, who was the first to arrive after the world collapsed into gray ruin. But chaos, dust, and tragedy left imprints on each of them. They all held a pretty good idea of what happened.

They stood like this in silence before he abruptly covered the pane with the lint-covered tape and propped the thick cardboard back on the window. They went through this routine every week and then Max, the old man, would invite her to play cards. She, Maggie, would tug on the sleeves of her ratty hoodie, pulling them over her hands, and feign protest. Maggie fantasized that Max was her uncle from Before – not the stranger who had found her, shivering and feral, as she hid in the woods After.

“Cards? Ugh. Booor-ing,” she’d tease each time.

But her heart leapt and she took her seat opposite Max, in a splintered wooden chair left by a college student from Before.

“Have I ever told you about concerts?” Max asked her. He had. Many times. But she slowly shook her head and bit her bottom lip. She soaked in his passionate storytelling and lapped up the sweet drink of his memories.

Max’s eyes widened and he looked behind her unkempt hair, heaped in a large haphazard pile atop her head, as he traveled back to a time when the world made sense. He knew she was growing up, no longer the small, trembling child he found. Maggie grew three inches in the year and a half since their arrival at the college. She beamed at him now with the grin of an energetic teenager. Max saw glimpses of his own, long-gone daughter, Katie, in Maggie’s rosy cheeks. He heard Katie in the echoes of her maturing voice and saw his daughter in her lopsided smile. He fought against a threatening torrent of tears and dove into his memories.

“Ah, Red Rocks. There was no venue like it. Saw Pearl Jam perform there twenty times between 2002 and 2022.”

He remembered the masses of people, swaying together, entranced by the music. Maggie could almost smell the sweat of excitement and hear the frenzied tunes wafting through the air as they landed on thousands of ears. She remembered the glow of the sun on her skin feeling like this … these concerts and their warm embraces.

******

At 13, Maggie wasn’t the youngest kid in their ragtag group, nor was she the oldest. She helped out with the little kids at the college, supervising coloring time and leading them on walks through the cavernous tunnels that connected each of the buildings on campus. But they didn’t listen to her. They saw her as a taller, awkward version of themselves.

The other day, Sammy, her favorite curly-mopped five-year-old, fell as they played and sliced his head. Maggie froze in place, her eyes fogged with misplaced anger. Her chest constricted and a tornado-like rage swept through her.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Sammy?” She heard herself scream. She knew she should run to him, to comfort him. But she felt like her body was encased in iron. She stared and watched Sammy, sobbing on the floor and bleeding.

The Dean told Maggie she couldn’t help anymore. He struck her hard against her cheek as he barked out the words. The world began to spin and Maggie fell to her knees as her eyes pooled with tears. He told her to keep their interaction locked away with the rest of her secrets. She promised she wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Max. But a growing disdain for the Dean beat against her chest: He reminded her of her old soccer coach who made her run drills until she threw up.

Every day there were new rules. Every day their safe haven from the new malevolent government outside –people who declared individualism a crime punishable by death – felt smaller and smaller. Maggie couldn’t breathe.

Only the desolation left by ghosts whose volcanoes of hatred erupted, who turned differences into weapons to launch against each other, awaited outside these once-hallowed halls of higher learning. But Maggie felt scratchy and hot, and her body yearned for escape.

She felt like a puzzle piece

that wouldn’t fit

anywhere.

She tried to jam herself into groups and purpose and spaces, but when she forced things, she began to break.

Maggie wanted to spill out her feelings, wanted to tell Max. But she knew he wouldn’t let her leave. When they’d first arrived at Canton College, Max said they would never run again. And so she smiled, and let him beat her at Rummy instead.

******

After the old man found the young girl, they ran through the hidden cracks of the world together. Maggie and Max spent months in sewers and abandoned buildings, hiding from the New Ultra – the crazed, uniformed gunmen who called themselves the “new government” After. Their loved ones from Before were gone. Max’s wife and daughter, Maggie’s parents and little brother. The girl clung to Max as a father figure. He felt flickers of hope spring alive in his chest. He couldn’t help but grow a paternal love for the girl. Yet he knew his own family was gone, as was hers. He couldn’t let her get too attached.

For the scattered people who remained, hope snuffed like a wet flame, and the exhaustion of grief ate at their bones. No one rose in protest against the New Ultra. There was no one left to stop them. They wore a collective face of poison, the New Ultra.

Max and Maggie hid together and watched as rows of battered pickup trucks and dirty SUVs rounded up the opposition. Horrified, they stifled screams as they watched innocent men, women, and children line up against abandoned school buildings. Silently, they held back sobs as loud pops filled the air and rows of lifeless bodies crumpled on the pavement.

They hid in the shadows. The young girl with her fairy princess backpack of goods. The old man with his worn Army duffle bag, stuffed with the life he’d left behind.

After the explosions, after her parents were rounded up with the others and taken away, Maggie spent the first weeks running deeper and deeper into the woods. She found a hidden clearing behind thick trees and foliage. Two large cedars bent at their trunks (a result of the bombs from Before, she figured), welcomed her. “Build a fort,” they whispered, “We’ll protect you.”

She relied on her Girl Scout training and each day, gathered more material to build a roof. Every sound she heard sent her into the back of the fort like cornered prey. Fear covered her with its spiky tentacles and ruled her days. She didn’t know how much time had passed when Max found her.

“Hello?” He yelled as he approached the fort’s opening. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m Max.” He emphasized "Max" as if his name took away any malevolent threat he might pose.

Max peered under the old burnt coats, twigs, and mud that thatched the fort’s roof, and gently extended his hand like an anchor.

Maggie grabbed hold of her rescuer and never let go.

Max smelled clean and cozy – he was an old blanket that she could hide under, her protector from the outside world. On her own, Maggie felt like she was swimming under murky water and like a swarm of bees buzzed in her chest. Max calmed her insides. He felt safe and secure, like the old home she struggled to remember.

When they found the college, he’d enveloped her in a bear hug and told her they could trust the group who welcomed them. An excited Maggie accidentally slipped and called Max “dad.” The old man roughly grabbed her shoulders and shook her.

“Never forget your dad, Maggie!” He spat through gritted teeth. “I am not your father.”

******

Max let his ode to Pearl Jam concerts gone-by fall to the floor. Maggie already knew the stories by heart. But he loved recounting every minute for her, as the light of forgotten simple pleasures filled the room. She clutched to every word, filling her treasure chest of memories from the Before. The others who comprised their fellow ragtag campus dwellers wanted to erase the leftover, brightly-colored hope from the old world. Hope was a painful, fiery sword that pierced their chests, and the Dean wouldn’t allow it.

He chuckled to himself at the thought of the Dean. The rangy, pock-marked, and mullet-haired “Dean” was maybe 30 and Max doubted he’d even finished high school. The Dean welcomed all survivors without judgment and as a master of delegation, kept their little society running. Nonetheless, his intellect wasn’t his strong suit.

When they’d first arrived, the college campus felt like Shangri-La. New Ultra made the tattered remains of higher education their first targets, so Canton College felt like the perfect place to hide. New Ultra had already ravaged the grounds: They wouldn’t be back. Their soldiers methodically went to every university and burned the collected history and tomes of knowledge to ash. Scattered student protestors, who refused to leave when the world ended, were killed or taken into custody. There was no room for facts in the After.

At Canton College, two side-by-side highrise dorms and the Main Hall survived the New Ultra attacks. Within the Main Hall, a fully-stocked infirmary and a large dining room stood ripe for the picking. The Ultra troops would never revisit and as long as no one ventured outside for more than a second, they were safe.

The changes seeped slowly into the survivors like deadly carbon monoxide. On the day Max and Maggie first arrived, a few members stood as armed lookouts. Many of the remaining adults lounged with books, basking in the sun. A teenage, pony-tail-haired boy strummed an acoustic guitar to the delight of several 16-year-old girls. Other kids played a pickup soccer game nearby. Altered life clung to the last vestiges of the old, and fleeting happiness still poked its head from the ruins of Before.

But then a trio of high school kids who came after Max and Maggie crept silently into the cavernous night and never returned. The next day, the Dean informed the community that the explosions from Before had released new toxins into the atmosphere. He declared the sun a new danger. Max knew the blatant lie behind the statement, but he played along. He understood the need to protect the community. He understood fear as a powerful tool.

His aging bones sagged under the mountain of future uncertainty and screamed for a place to settle. To sleep. Besides, he had to protect Maggie and the others. But as he surveyed the campus, he saw the scars of fear too. The bloodied aftermath of uncontrollable fear pointed an accusatory finger toward him. Had they just traded in one destructive, fearful society for another?

Fear could again grow into a monster. He’d pay attention. But for now, they needed to rest.

******

Max lifted his hand and absently scratched the side of his scraggly white beard. He smiled at his young charge. He wondered if Maggie sensed the cancerous changes of their “home” too. The Dean had them both signed up for so many tasks and committees, he rarely saw his young ward. But Max knew she anticipated their weekly visits as much as he did.

He reached over and cupped his arthritic fingers over Maggie’s small hand. Max noticed a faded but deep bruise near Maggie’s left temple. Blue and purple lines ran down the side of her face.

“What happened there?” he nodded toward her. “Someone do that to you?”

“Um, no,” Maggie nervously shifted her eyes to the floor and pulled wisps of hair to cover the bruise. “It’s nothing.”

He thought he’d caught a panicked plea in her eyes. Her mouth opened to spill out her secrets but closed without an uttered word. Maggie tilted her head and smiled at Max. He asked her again, in a soft whisper, “Who did that to you, Mags?”

The dam of her fearful emotions broke, and she told Max everything. Rubbing his forehead, he sighed. He pulled the girl’s chair toward his own and hugged her. He didn’t know if his crumbling bones could survive a life on the run. But he knew Maggie wouldn’t survive if they didn’t make plans to leave.

He could worry about their escape later. For now, he needed to rid their small world of the lengthening shadows that enveloped it. Maggie’s sobs slowed, and Max rose slowly from his chair. He kissed the girl’s forehead and turned back to the window. “Care to join me?” He asked.

Together, they ripped the tape and cardboard from the window. Together, they let the light in.