The Leaving

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. The broken landscape slurred away in the darkening light with little to hold her gaze other than the shattering of trees which poke up skeletal from the barren hills or which lay strewn like charred bones from some primitive sacrifice. The pale sun guttered away behind thick clouds which smeared the sky in long strakes of grey and there would be no more birds ever again. The abandoned cities lay far beyond and lost from sight, the land motionless save for the faint stirrings of pale dust that rose like mindless wraiths to skirt across the splintered pavement only to disintegrate in the failing updraft against the rocks. She stared for a long time. The world in its dying and her first glance in which to behold it. She knew there was no one else save for the others here for they were the last of themselves.

Desmond stood at a short distance behind her in his fumbled woolen jacket. “You wanted to see. Now you saw.”

“It’s cold,” she whispered, her fingers tracing in quiet circles over the stone sill and her breath fogging the gas mask securely in place.

“It will always be cold.”

The girl looks back over her shoulder. “Thank you. It’s beautiful” her voice muffled behind the plastic.

“Beautiful?”

She teeters on the edge of the crate peering back through the window. “I just kinda said that. I don’t know what beautiful is. Is this beautiful?”

Desmond smiles plaintively. “It will have to be.” He checks his watch. “Okay it’s time. Desiree, it’s time. Let’s go.”

Desiree steps down sadly from the crate as Desmond shuts the metal doors over the window and places the iron pin in place snapping the lock in place. The cement room now suddenly dark save for the bare bulb hanging from its thin cord like a warm execution. Grey shades upon grey shades and little to punctuate the room other than an assortment of dulling boxes with the relics of a world that no longer exists – newspapers, magazines and the narratives of lives that believed there was a future. The books they kept in the gathering room downstairs, but scant in number for there was no time. Three years ago now.

“Why is there only one window?” Desiree asked as Desmond shooed her into the hallway and locked the metal door behind them.

“We’re lucky there’s any at all.”

“The radiation?”

“The radiation.”

“When can I look again?”

“Likely never. Why would you?”

“It’s not just this,” she says waving her hand at the walls. “This place.”

“This place is all we got. I told you and we’re lucky to have it. You can take that thing off now.”

Desiree pulls the gas mask off over her tangled red hair, the red ring from its impression lining her pale face like its own mask bearing her likeness. They head down the dark metal stairs, their steps echoing off the bare stone walls.

“The gathering’s still tonight?” Desiree asks.

“Every month. You know that.”

“I hate it. It’s depressing.”

“It’s necessary.”

“Why? We just say the same things. Alice has her stupid chant and…”

“It’s not stupid. Don’t say that.”

“It is stupid. I know we’re the only ones left. I know there’s no leaving. It’s like we’re all going to die here.”

“We are all going to die. There’s no avoiding it. Quincy took the truck, months of supplies and never came back. Now there’s no more foraging.”

“How much food do we have left?”

“Don’t you worry about that.”

“How much?”

“It’s not for you to know.” Desiree stops and jumps in front of him.

“Tell me! I’m a big girl now.”

“You’re ten, Desiree.”

“I’ll just find out anyways.”

Desmond looks down, his ebony skin folding under his greying chin like thick hills. “Three weeks. Depends on how many take the Leaving.”

“We never talked about the Leaving until a month ago.”

“We’ve always had the Leaving, we just didn’t mention it. It had always been part of the plan in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case we ran out of food.”

“Which we will.”

“Yes, which we will”

“When did you find out?”

“Alice told me last night. She’s in charge of the food. Counted what we had left. Did it twice just to be sure.”

They reach the bottom of the stairs to the first floor and turn right towards the main hall. The cold walls dotted with pale blue lights every few feet casting the hallway in dour light. “Does it hurt?” Desiree asks.

“Does what hurt?”

“The Leaving.”

“It’s not supposed to. It’s like going to sleep.”

“But does it?”

“The only ones to ask, little lady ain’t here to be asked.”

The compound was a hundred yards across and perfectly circular. A behemoth of concrete with foot thick walls impenetrable from without and within which sat imperious within an abandoned quarry with a singular black-top road that ran once unbroken to a network of crisscrossing desert roads that made it impossible to find without a map. Built before the wars to protect survivors against potential hells that could fall like a derecho upon the continent - a graven contingency and temporal in purpose for no one thought it would be the end. Supplied for a year though now largely empty for the EMP’s fried radios like metallic popcorn and the warnings died in electronic silence.

Built for hundreds but now housing only the few unfortunate dregs entombed within - twenty-seven in all and mostly children. Everyone had lost everyone, parents sending their children out first to wait for the buses and trucks which never returned till no families remained, just their riven progeny screaming from windows of vehicles growing more distant as the skies grew red with death and bunkered away and which held no windows from which to hope them from save the one.

Alice and Desmond were the stewards of the compound and part of the thirteen elders whose position only meant that they were adults and now parents by proxy. The unused housing sections sealed off to preserve heat and the remainders of survivors ensconced in the only open wing. The central gallery was domed in sky blue like an erstwhile cathedral and the only area where any aesthetics were attempted. Relics of the once outside world fashioned the walls in an attempt at morale but came off earnest in its incoherent patchwork of movie posters, lighthouse paintings and bands that will never play again. And it is here where the Gathering was held.

Alice was a lean woman of greying age and held center ringed by the survivors slouched on the frayed mangle of couches, chairs and pillows collected from places of unknown origin. Elders hands on children's backs and smiling in solemn comfort which none of the children were comforted by for like innocent prophets they could intuit the very air and knew the news was dire. Quincy’s theft and desertion changed everything.

Alice stood regal at the center and began the litany, a litany now long carved into their minds that they no longer needed the pamphlets and responded in monotonous rote.

“We are who remain,” she intoned like a latter day saint, her thin chin lifted high.

“We are who remain,” they mumbled in return.

“We are all who remain.”

“We are all who remain.”

Desiree stared at the floor, her arms folded long between her knees her fingers tracing the cement floor. She knew the rest. That they were survivors, the brave last ones, the hope of humanity and the future. In the early days this worked. It brought the comfort the words were ordained to evoke but now everyone knew better. The world in its unmaking was never going to heal. Hope was now the ashes that stirred in the wind and cast lifeless against lifeless rocks in a lifeless world. There will be no return now. In three weeks they would all begin to starve.

Hank was a pudgy man in his middle age, his eyes magnified behind thick glasses and spoke up in his threadbare green sweater he had not taken off since his arrival. “Okay, we can blame this on Quincy but what difference does it actually make? Really? A month?”

“Two months.”

“Okay, two months. Then that’s it. I mean really it.”

Alice looked down and breathed deeply as if to draw her words from the air. “Quincy...Quincy never belonged here. He was driven by fantasy and paranoia. He didn’t believe in us.”

“That’s not true,” Hank shot back. “He loved us. He loved everyone here.”

Alice glared. “Then why did he steal our food, steal our only truck? Our remaining fuel. Took the keys for the front gate. Now we can’t look for supplies. He left us helpless. And trapped.”

Hank looked up to blue dome, perhaps his words were there and crushed his fingers together. “And foraging brought us what? A crate of peaches and ten packs of band-aids. The city is dead, Alice! Ransacked. There’s nothing out there for us!”

“Then what do you propose?”

“I know what you’ll propose.”

All eyes were upon them. They knew what was coming. The only viable solution against slow starvation, maybe even cannibalism. That implacable descent into madness and slow brutal anguish turning them all to monsters. It takes months to die of starvation. Desiree buries her face in her hands as Desmond wraps his arm across her back.

“We can begin rationing,” Alice offers.

Hank doesn’t look up, but shakes his head slowly. “No. No...no. I don’t want to live like that.” He looks up plaintively. “I don’t want this anymore.”

Alice paces in a slow circle in the deathly silence of the room and sweeps a grey lock of hair from her face. “The Leaving...the Leaving is...peaceful. It has always remained an option in case...” She bites her lip into a curl. “Stephan...Stephan can help.” Stephan stood apart from the group against the back wall, his hands behind his back looking blankly to the side and then after a long moment nodded almost imperceptibly.

A woman’s voice shouts from the side. Janice. “What about the children?! What about them?” The look of trembling terror on her face as she clutches her two charges against her. A boy and girl, younger than Desiree but not by much. They look to her in confusion as cries begin to erupt from around the room.

“Children cannot choose the Leaving!” Alice bursts out unexpectedly. “That is their elder’s choice.”

“That’s cruel! It’s cruel and it’s wrong.” Janice looks about the room in a lost bewilderment, her mouth open in a silent cry. “They shouldn’t be here for this! What’s wrong with you?”

“We make decisions together. We always have.”

“But not this! Not this!” Janice stands and claps her hands. “Kids, we’re going! C’mon. Let’s go. We’re going to the library. Yes, all of you. C’mon, it’s okay, it’s okay. You too, Desiree.”

Desiree shakes her head as Janice glares, looks away and shoos the kids into a bewildered analog of a line. Some cry but most look confused and frightened. Janice ushers them through the side door, glowers back at Alice and shuts the door behind her the echo dying in the air like the tolling of a church bell. Then silence.

Alice crumples into a chair, covers her face and weeps. Long sobs of the pre-bereft. The unimaginable horror to come and no time in which to comprehend it. For time cannot count such things such as sorrow, just the time left before they all begin to die. The silence punctuated only by Alice’s weeping is now joined by the others in a great exhalation of anguish which spread in a collective wave of sorrow. Even to Desmond.

Minutes pass and Alice stands, sweeping her hair from her face. “I don’t think we should wait til the end. I don’t. Why should we? And don’t give me that look. Save the best rations for last. Have a final meal and then...we do what we have to do.”

“You mean kill us first?” Desiree says.

“No one’s killing anyone here, Des. No one said that. We just...take the Leaving together. Go out with dignity.”

“Why do we call it that?! Why don’t we just say what it is? You try to make it sound all nice like a vacation. It’s stupid. This is all stupid.”

Alice folds his hands. “You don’t have to do anything, Des. You don’t. No one’s going to force you. You can do or not do whatever you want.”

“Then I won’t. I’m not taking it.”

Alice nods. “Then don’t. Don’t. Really. But let me say this, young lady. You know what it’s like to be starving?”

“I’m starving now.”

“No! You might be hungry but you’re not starving. Don’t eat for three weeks and then you’ll know what real starving is. Then go four, five weeks, even longer. Imagine months. It’s when a fear you’ve never known takes you. When your mind begins to go to the dark places and things you’d never do sound doable and you will even crave to do them.”

“You mean eat people.”

“I mean anything. You’d even eat the furniture if you could. And you’d try.”

Desiree jumps to her feet. “You’re crazy! That’s crazy.”

Alice leans forward on her chair. “My brother was Ramon Sabella. You wouldn’t have heard of him, but you listen to me. He was a soccer player many years ago. His plane crashed in the Andes mountains along with all his teammates. Bodies strewn and frozen in the snow. People he knew, people he loved. Seventy-two days they were trapped with only some chocolate to eat. Well, that chocolate ran out. Everything ran out yet they lived. And guess how?

“That’s different.”

“It’s no different, little lady! This is our Andes Mountain. Except that there is no rescue coming for us.”

Desmond stands. “Enough, Alice. Enough!”

Alice crosses her arms around herself like a straight jacket. “She wanted to stay, so she gets to hear the truth.”

“And so this is your plan?” Desiree retorts. “That’s it? We just all kill ourselves before we eat each other?”

Alice goes quiet and turns away and then after a long moment speaks softly almost to herself. “What other choice do we have, Desiree?”

“You’re the adults. You’re supposed to have a plan. To think of something else. A search party. Anything. There has to be something out there.”

Alice turns gently. “I know Desmond let you look through the window. You saw for yourself. The closest city is fifty miles away through the wasteland and there’s nothing there anymore. Just death, Desiree. Just death.”

Desmond wraps his thick arms around Desiree pulling her close. “Okay, okay. No one’s deciding anything tonight alight? Alright? We still have some time. Let’s...let’s just get some rest. We can talk about this tomorrow.”

Alice simply nods. Almost imperceptibly. A sad resignation devoid of hope. The rest of the Elders rise in a numb quietude.

“I don’t want this either!” Alice shouts to the nearly vacant room.

Eyes averting eyes and a leaden shamble back to the stone recesses of the compound to sorrow in their own privatude.

Desmond and Desiree sit on their bunks, the warm light from the bare bulb cutting hard shadows across the floor, the walls and themselves.

“Will you take it?” Desiree asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I know you don’t, Des.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“No one does, but we all do.”

“But not like this.”

“No, not like this.”

Desiree traces her feet over the floor in languid circles. “Will there be birds in Heaven?”

“I don’t believe in Heaven, Des.”

“Okay.”

The night is choked in silence and Desiree is bolt awake as Desmond lies on his side snoring in gentle cycles like a kitten. He’s left the keys to the window on the desk. He never does this she thinks and stares at them for a long time. Then feeling like a thief she slips from the cot and buries them in her pocket.

Outside the window the night wails in a cry of ash. Desiree eyes the frozen landscape for any movement but all that moves are the deathly grey clouds that smear east as if to grind the remaining thin crescent of the moon from the sky like pumice. Dead branches, dead grass and the cold wind which sweeps them in violent torrents as if a great witch of the air raged them away with her broom in an endless obliterating of the world never to be made clean again. So cold, she thought. Then off to her right, on the periphery of which the window would allow her to see, something moved. Almost imperceptible in the dark but a creature living, a dull clot of a thing on four legs. A dog she thought, a dog!

Desiree craned forward grasping the edge of the window. “Doggie! Hey! Hey doggie!” The creature lifted its narrow head into the night air darting it to and fro, its frosted breath vanishing instantly in the wind. It’s mottled coat pulled tight over harrowing ribs as its gaunt legs jittering in alertness. “Here! Over here!” The creature froze turning its head in Desiree’s direction. She waved. Hunching back, it howled a thin rattling moan, shook its head and bounded off into the darkness.

Desiree rushed downstairs caterwauling against the walls in her flailing excitement.

“Desmond! Desmond! I saw a dog!”

Desmond rolled over sluggish. “What are you saying, girl?”

“It was a dog. I saw it. It ran away.”

“What are you on about? A dog?”

“We’re not the only ones!”

Desmond rubbed his face but kept his face covered. “Okay, you saw a dog but that doesn’t mean…”

“There’s life out there. That means there’s hope.”

“There ain’t no hope in a stray dog. What? You want us to eat it?”

Desiree glared. “No! It’s just…”

“Just what? Something didn’t die?”

“There could be people.”

“There ain’t no people.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Did you see any people? We ain’t seen no people. Not in three years, not even in the city, not anywhere. And what were you doing looking out the window.”

“You left the key.”

“I didn’t leave the key, you just took it.”

“You left it out.”

Desmond furrows his brow. “Go back to bed.”

“We have to tell the others.”

“Tell the others what? You saw a dog so we’re all going to live now?”

“You just don’t get it.”

“I get that you don’t want things to be what they are. Go to bed.

Desiree slumps back into her bunk and then is suddenly haunted by a thought. She didn’t wear her gas mask. Would she now die just by another means? She crosses her legs and arms. “No birds in Heaven.”

The days blurred into a week, then two. A great pall hung over the survivors and few spoke in the bleak countdown. Implacable and final. The decision was made. Less of them now. Some took the Leaving early. Hank was already gone. Every night she opened the window to the dark howl of nothingness. She never saw the dog again.

It was a Tuesday that was decided upon. Their final meal, the Leaving and then peaceful oblivion. Desiree sat beside Desmond as the last of their food was prepared. Chicken Cordon-Blu and freeze dried salmon. Reconstituted pudding. Everyone ate in silence despite Alice’s speech encouraging them to be brave and that they did the best they could. They had done it. They had survived. But that term had now lost all meaning. The children are dismissed.

Stephan came out with the tray of drinks. Murky purple in plastic cups, his voice haltering as he gave the instructions and all eyes upon him. “Understand, no one is forced to do this. You understand?” Some nod, others just stare blankly outwards. “But if you choose, drink...drink this slowly. You will feel some dizziness and you’ll get sleepy. There could be some nausea. It um, won’t be long after that.” He takes his cup and puts it aside. “Please, do this at your bunks and be lying down. There’s enough in a cup for two children. That’s...that’s all I have to say.”

The Elders rise in their turns and shuffle like vagabonds up to the tray each taking two cups. Alice is the first and leaves wordlessly. Some wrap their arms around each other and wander to the bunk area as others simply take seats, their cups at their feet faces buried in their hands till they too rise and join the others in this final act. An ecumenical rite devoid of grace. Stephan traces his hand unconsciously over the table offering a hesitant smile. Only Desmond and Desiree remain along with the two cups waiting for them. “I’ll wait till tonight,” Stephan offers till he too takes his cup and exits the room.

Desmond rises and brings the cups over looking somberly at Desiree. He places hers on the table. “Don’t,” she says.

“I know you won’t take…”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then don’t what?”

“Don’t say goodbye.”

“Des…”

“I mean it.” And they say nothing for a long time. From behind the stone walls there is the muffled sound of sobbing, a voice calling out incoherent and after a few minutes the room returns to silence. “That was Janice,” Desiree whispers.

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘You have to, baby.’ I couldn’t understand the rest.” Desmond squeezes his eyes shut. “Just leave, Desmond. Just do it. No, don’t hug me.”

After a long moment Desmond stands with forlorn eyes, but Desiree doesn’t look up drilling her eyes to a spot on the floor, her lip quivering. She can here his steps receding then stop. “Des, just so you know.”

“What?”

“Our bodies will be poisoned. We won’t be any good.” He stands in silence then the sound of the metal door shutting as Desiree lets out a long wail, primal and lost then collapses into weeping.

She never returned to the room. She didn’t want to see him nor the others. Curled up in the pillows of the gathering room as hunger began to eat at her. Days passed then a week. It takes months to die Alice said. She stares at the cup. Dark rings of evaporation marking the days since they left. Now, she was beginning to understand. Nothing off limits now, the areas Alice kept forbidden. Des scuffles the back halls now weak from hunger. Rooms of linens and cleaning supplies. The pump room which drew the water from the hot springs below and carried it to all ends of the compound giving it eternal warmth. Then at the end of the hall lie the pantry, the door firmly bolted in place. They couldn’t have used all the food. She yanks and kicks at the door but Alice kept the only key. No moving it. Back in the gathering room she noticed a smell. A sickly sweet stench that clung in her nose. Then she realized - Everyone was rotting.

She grabbed the bedding and pillows and dragged them up to the window room. Unbolting the latch to the window, the frigid air swept over her. She breathed deeply the outside air until the stench left her. Her stomach felt like a fist. She collapsed into the bedding heaving in despair. This is the room she’d die in she thought and the next day she retrieved the cup and placed it in the corner far from where she could spill it. She drew it to her nose to take in the stale acrid odor. Tilting it to her lips she let the poison come just an inch from drinking and tilted it back. And this she did every day.

Two weeks now and she slept more than was awake. Her dreams were of Desmond when they first arrived. Hallucinations of another world shorn away. Her mother in the park and the green green grass. The taste of lemonade. And slept again.

Somewhere in the night Jes awoke to a sound but couldn’t place it. A horn honking, not a dream. She scrambled to the window peering down below. The truck was parked outside the gate, a tarp tied down over an unseen heap and a trailer hitched behind. Quincy had returned. He leaned in through the cab and was laying on the horn.

“Quincy?”

Quincy in his leather cowboy hat and worn jeans spun around looking in all directions like a side show barker looking for his audience. He glances up. “Jess? Hey, Jess! Looky here! Ya wouldn't believe it.”

“You left us!”

“I ain’t leave you. I told Alice I was goin’ on a deep run, just took longer than I thought that’s all.”

“You took all our food!”

Quincy stands baffled with his hand on his hips and wipes his nose. “What you talkin’ about. Stole yer food. I ain’t stole yer food. Yeah, I took some for barterin’ but y’all got half a year in there easy. Who told ya that nonsense?”

“Alice did.”

“Alice did. That old kook is nuts. I told Desmond and the others to never let her be in charge of nuthin’. She got doomsday on the brain. I swear it was that whole thing with her brother. Ignore her. Can’t wait to see the look on her face when she sees this haul. And what’s wrong with you? You look terrible. You sick, Des?”

“I’m...hungry.”

Quincy shakes his head. “Well, you ain’t gonna be hungry no more. Check it.” He undoes the ropes and pulls off the tarp loaded with supplies as if revealing a magic trick. “I got us canned meats, vegetables, fruit, anything you could want. Fuel, medical supplies, games! I got us some new games. Look! Shoots and Ladders! I even scored this trailer.”

Des felt sick. Dry heaves convulsed her as she bent forward, her mouth drooling. Recovering as best she could she called back down to Quincy. “Where did you get all this?”

“Compound up in Montana. Took me weeks to find. There’s others, Jess just like you said. Kids yer age too. They even got cattle. Good folks too. They couldn't believe we were livin’ in this shithole. We can all get outa here. We can leave!”

“What about the radiation?”

“What radiation? Yeah, there’s some but not more than a few clicks above normal now. It’s dyin’ out. People are livin’ out there, Jess. We just have to get out of this hell hole and go north. I think we got hit more than any other. From the looks of it you'd think the whole world was like this. Jes, these people even have a bus they say we can use.” Jess stands there stricken. “What’s that face you got on?” Jess steps back from the window and eases herself down onto the bedding staring at the cup in the corner. “C’mon get the others and help me unload this thing! We got some celebrating to do.”