ALL IS SILENCE Read online

  She cracked open the pack of frozen burritos, threw a couple in the microwave on a paper towel, then nudged the mouse at the computer. Maybe Jess had left a message.

  Sure enough. Lizzie! Call me.

  Lizzie pulled her phone out and hit the redial button. It rang and rang.

  Jess picked up, breathing hard. “Thank God, Lizzie. You had me all worked up. I called your number, but you didn’t pick up. I thought maybe you...”

  “Jess! I'm here. I promised.” She glanced at her phone. “Stupid ringer button was off. I went out today, like you said. You know how I used to say Bellingham was a dead city, now it really is.” She laughed.

  “Lizzie? You fucking scared me.”

  “Jeez, Jess. You dropped an F-bomb. You don’t talk like that. I went out like I said I would.”

  “Yeah. I thought you killed yourself.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lizzie said. “I met someone…”

  “Alive?”

  “Yeah. Mostly. Kinda weird. He couldn’t talk. Seemed kinda dumb. Reminded me of the dogs I was saving today.” Lizzie recounted her adventures of the day, but stopped when she realized that Jess was too quiet. “You okay, Jess?”

  “No.” Jess sniffled. “I tried to dig a grave. But I didn't have the strength. I gave up. I thought about burning the house down.”

  “Oh, Jess.” Lizzie wished she could hug her through the phone.

  “We have an old root cellar, sunken, near the house. I wrapped them in blankets,” Jess said, weeping. “Carried them in a wheelbarrow.” A sob punctuated her pain. “I lay them on the shelves. I don't think I can stay in the house, Lizzie.”

  “No. You can't. Go into town. Is there anyone else you're in touch with?”

  “An aunt. In Maine. And it's been a few days.” Jess’s voice turned angry again. “Why'd God do this? Why are we still alive?”

  “I don't know that God did this.” Lizzie sighed. “I wish I was there or you were here.”

  “I’d rather be there. With you.” Jess sniffed. “Tomorrow I'll go into town. Not sure where from there.”

  “Me neither. It’s weird. The worst part is the silence. Outside, the quiet gets to me.” The microwave chimed reminding Lizzie her food was heated. “Hey, I'm gonna put you down while I get my burritos, 'kay?”

  “I'm wasted tired. I just need to sleep. How 'bout I call you tomorrow night.”

  “'kay. Night, Jess. Love you.”

  “Love you, too. Night, Lizzie.”

  Lizzie snuggled into her Mama's bed, eating her burritos and salsa. She settled in to watch a movie marathon from her dad's collection: Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, and Some Kind of Wonderful. End with the best: Watts, the feisty drummer, was her favorite character ever.

  The endless repeating menu music of Some Kind of Wonderful woke Lizzie about three a.m. She turned it off and got up to brush her teeth.

  Back in bed the quiet would not let her rest. Her mind raced. So much had happened today, she didn’t know what to make of it all. She knew one thing for certain. She was alone.

  4

  LIZZIE WOKE SWEATING. GOD, AM I feverish? She put her hand to her forehead. You’re being paranoid. It was the covers; she kicked them off.

  The clock read 5:35 AM, but she was wide awake. She felt tired, but didn’t want to go back to sleep. She sat up and looked out the window. It was a dark, damp November morning. The crescent moon shone through a gap in the clouds.

  Lizzie felt jealous of the moon as she got out of bed and headed for the kitchen. The moon always returned, even after her darkest hour. Lizzie had no idea how she was going to come back from all that had happened. She poured a cup of yesterday's coffee and put it in the microwave. Then she fixed herself instant oatmeal.

  After breakfast she stepped outside into the pre-dawn air. It was cold, but not freezing. She shivered and zipped her coat. Yesterday she looked for food, and someone left alive. Today she had a different goal.

  Destinacione: El hospital. Though her father spoke Spanish and her original last name was Guerrero, the only Spanish she knew was from Dora the Explorer and song lyrics: “Uno, dos, tres, catorce” and “Si no me quieres, librame.” Lo siento, Papa. Lizzie hit the street, and headed up the opposite direction beside the freeway.

  At the end of the street she took the trail leading to her old elementary school, Sunnyland. The clouds had cleared away and the sliver of a moon appeared stark in the growing daylight. She slipped through the shadows of the trees until she came to the one Jayce said looked like an old man’s face. It stared at her with mournful eyes.

  She came out at the War Memorial and walked toward the school. It was strange to see the play equipment, with its faded primary colors, silent and empty.

  Lizzie left the school behind and crossed James Street. She felt a tingling on her neck again like someone was watching her. This time she stepped behind a car and ducked down. Sure enough, her hungry acquaintance from yesterday was following her.

  “Shit,” she whispered. She should have brought the gun. Lizzie looked through the semi-tinted windows of the car. He’d seen her and was walking straight toward her.

  “Hey, dog-collar man, you hungry?” She took out another Snickers bar, peeled back the wrapper and held it up for him to see, laid it on the hood of the car, and backed away.

  A big, dumb smile lit up his face when he saw her. While he devoured his treat, Lizzie hopped a fence and cut across a couple backyards to lose him. She reached the end of the row of houses. Exposed to the street again, she ran.

  She reached the hospital, her nerves live-wired, LIzzie hopped in an unlocked car, closed the door, and watched the way she had come. Her fingers found their way to her mouth. Don’t chew your nails. It was always Mama’s voice saying that.

  She'd picked up a tail. He acted like a dog, a dog-man.

  After a while, she decided she was safe, safe. Safe from Spike, the dog-man. Lizzie smiled to herself―Spike suited him. She headed to the hospital doors. Like at St. Luke’s, a sign in front said, “Danger! DO NOT enter! Quarantine!” She kicked the sign over as she passed.

  The automatic doors opened as she neared. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” she muttered, quoting Dante. Air whooshed out like she had unsealed a tomb, carrying the reek of death and bleach. Her stomach heaved and she clamped her hand over her mouth.

  A body slumped over the information desk. Others lay at odd angles on and off the seats and stretchers in the waiting room. As she pushed further in she had to pull her shirt up over her face against the smell. Everything screamed at her to run away. Her imagination went into hyper drive. She envisioned the dead bodies rising around her. This is real life, not the movies, she told herself, trying to shake the images.

  At the directory on the wall she looked for the elevator. She hit the up button. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw an arm move. She hurried in and punched Floor #3.

  The elevator doors sealed together with a bang. Her heart lurched. What if they didn't open again? What if the elevator plummeted down and smashed her to bits? But it glided upward like it should. As it came to a slow stop at the third floor, Lizzie tugged the doors open.

  There was a morbid orderliness here: bodies stacked neatly against the wall. This time Lizzie's stomach upended and most of her breakfast landed in a potted plant. She rinsed her mouth in a water fountain and got a handle on herself, scanning door numbers for 314.

  A shuffle sounded behind her. She froze. Get a grip, Lizzie. Stop freaking out. It’s your imagination. It had to be. But no. Something moved again. She swiveled slowly. A hand reached out for her and she screamed.

  Her scream trailed off as a middle-aged man wearing scrubs and a stethoscope strained to speak. “You shouldn’t be here,” he mumbled, barely able to put the words together.

  “My mom and brother. They came here after they got sick.” She didn’t know what else to say. Was she in trouble?

  His name tag read: Dr. Reynolds, Pediatrician. He
eyed her strangely, trying to keep his balance. He didn’t look like he was in any shape to enforce the quarantine.

  “You—you’re immune.” His words came with more difficulty and he stumbled to the floor.

  “What?” She knelt beside him, not sure she understood. I’m immune?

  “Not sick. Natural immunity.” His speech was slurring and running together, becoming less and less coherent. “Find others. Have babies. Keep on. Strong.”

  Then, as if he’d burnt the last of his candle, he smiled a half smile and slid to the floor.

  Was he dead? Lizzie pulled away from him in horror, skittering backwards like a crab, bumping into a medical cart. She used it to scramble to her feet and then pushed it so it blocked him into the other end of the hallway. He snored, letting her know he still lived.

  The doctor’s freakish plan to have her survive and repopulate the planet had a fatal flaw. She was sterile. Her family doctor had told her she would never have kids after some asshole gave her chlamydia.

  Room 314 beckoned her like a haven from the nightmare behind her. She closed her eyes as she opened the door, not wanting to see yet another awful scene. She breathed deep and opened her eyes. There lay Mama with Jayce nestled in her arms. They looked asleep, peaceful. Had Mama refused to let Jayce go? Or had there been nowhere left to put him?

  On the floor, curled into the fetal position, was the nurse with a bottle of pills in her hand. Lizzie gently extracted the bottle from her stiffened grasp. Oxy’s. Empty. A way out of the nightmare, an emergency exit. Without the bottle the nurse appeared to be praying.

  Lizzie kissed her mother's cold forehead. Straightened her hair and tousled her little brother's. “I stole your watch, little man. I miss you,” she said through sobs. “I love you both.” She lay her head down on them, but they weren’t there.

  She had come to find out—to make sure. It was real. She thought about burying them, but if Jess couldn’t do it, how could she? The thought of leaving them there pissed her off. She screamed, letting the rage keep the tears away. All the profanity and swear words she knew boiled out in a torrent.

  When she was done, she pulled a sheet up to cover Mama and Jayce, and stumbled from the room. She couldn’t go back past the doctor so she pushed open a door at the end of the hall that said “Emergency Exit Only,” ignoring the shrill alarm that sounded behind her.

  She couldn’t remember the walk home. It was like she’d lost that time. The shot glass in her hand, the pink frilly one Mama got in Vegas, was filled to the top with amber liquid, Mama’s brandy. She raised it, pondering what to toast.

  “A better place!” she said and downed it.

  The brandy burned down her throat and out her nostrils. She filled the glass again. Pain was an old friend. It told her she was still alive. She stared again at the ladder of cuts on her arm. Her fingers traced the scars, soft white lines that had started as a vivid red ruin. She hadn’t cut since she moved the blade to her wrist. Blood and pain had always seemed like the only true reality.

  There were no messages on Facebook, no texts, no calls. There were 37 saved messages in her voicemail from before the end of the world. Lizzie listened to them one by one: Jayce’s voice. Mama’s voice. Jess. Even one from her ex, Chad. All normal, dull and wonderfully “real.” It should have made her sad. But the brandy flowed in and no tears came out. She jabbed delete at the various drunken and angry messages from Jerkwad, and saved the rest.

  Lizzie tried calling Jess. She let it ring. No answer.

  She tried the family cells. No answer.

  Finally she texted: Call me. Please. Lizzie.

  She plugged in her player and set it to random. The bottle of brandy was getting low. She recognized the darkness coming. She'd hated her life, high school, her mother's endless string of boyfriends. Well, she got her wish and everyone had left her alone, but it felt more like they left her behind.

  Why did I have to be immune? It could already be over for her if she had gotten sick and died like everyone else. She sent Jess another text: Dont know if i can take it much longer. She’d made a promise to Jess, but what if Jess was already dead?

  She sat heavily on the computer chair nearly upending it. She grabbed the desk to steady herself and pulled up Facebook. She tapped the letters on the keyboard with a dramatic flair: Goodbye cruel world.

  Lizzie glanced at the shotgun sitting on the kitchen table. She stood and stumbled toward it, picking it up, hefting the weight in her hands. A vision of blood spreading over the ground popped unbidden into her head, like the body at the convenience store. No sense leaving a mess.

  She walked into the bathroom, lay down in the tub, and put the barrel of the gun in her mouth. The metal tasted acrid and oily. She checked that she could still reach the trigger. Then she lay there, hugging the shotgun like it was her last friend in the world.

  “NO!” Lizzie shoved the shotgun away. It hit the wall with a clatter and slid behind the tub. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t pull the trigger and blow her brains out.

  She dragged herself out of the tub, holding onto the toilet. The medicine cabinet. Her eyes wouldn’t focus to read the labels, but she figured there was no need to be choosy if she took enough. Her hands struggled with the lids, but soon she had a double handful of various pills.

  She started swallowing, chasing the pills with water. I don’t want to die in the bathroom. She stumbled to Mama’s bed and took the last handful.

  By the time she got to the last two pills, her hands could barely lift them to her mouth. Her eyelids were just as heavy. She managed to pop them in as the world got dim, but they caught in her throat. The last thing she remembered was coughing, and her body wracking with spasms.

  5

  THE NEXT SENSATION LIZZIE FELT was her body being lifted and carried. She didn’t want to open her eyes; she was in a warm and safe place. It felt like the times a long ago when she would fall asleep and wake up to find someone carrying her to bed. Daddy? She wanted to stay in this place.

  “Lizzie?” A male voice asked.

  “Daddy?” She opened her eyes reluctantly. Light stabbed at them and she brought her hand to her head with a groan.

  “No. It’s Zach.”

  “Zach?”

  “Zach Riley. From high school. Sophomore year? I saw your post.”

  She was mortified. Did she say “daddy” out loud? “I wasn’t expecting you. Is this Hell then?” She giggled. Zach had been a pest, forever pledging his love for her.

  “No. But I bet it feels like it. You threw up all over yourself. You need a shower.”

  Lizzie smelled the puke and squinted down at the crusted mess on her Queen t-shirt. She gagged at the sight.

  “I’m going to sit you on the toilet seat,” Zach said, setting her down gently.

  “’kay.” She felt her body make contact with the hard seat and felt a twinge of regret at being separated from Zach’s warmth. One strong hand stayed on her shoulder though as he turned on the tap in the tub. The connection felt good. Even if it was just Zach.

  It had been a couple years since she’d seen him. This strong young man with the John Deere ball cap was very different from the short, pimply punk kid she remembered. “Where’d you come from?”

  “Sedro. Drove up as soon as I saw your post.”

  “My post?”

  “You said you were gonna off yourself. On Facebook.”

  “Oh, I don’t remember that at all.” Her face flushed, and she turned away from Zach.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Hungover.” She leaned her face against the ceramic sink, solid and cold. Someone had found her. “Not dead.”

  “Good.” Zach said looking concerned.

  Nobody had looked at her like that in a long time. “Fuck you, Zach,” she said, trying to push him away and stay upright on her own. Was it the look of concern that made her angry or the fact that she wanted it. “I didn’t want a hero.”

  His eyes dropped. Her a
nger threatened to melt. She always had a hard time staying mad at him. Damn puppy dog-eyes thing. Lizzie wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. Her head only made it up to his chest where his heart pounded. Here was a peaceful place. She hadn’t touched anyone alive since hugging her mother and brother goodbye. The tears welled up in her eyes. “Sorry, Zach. You didn’t deserve that.”

  “I didn’t save your life, you know.” he said soft in her ear. “I found you. Disgusting, but definitely alive.”

  “Oh.”

  “You still want to die?”

  “I can’t decide.” Lizzie sat back. “I think I can stand.” Her feet were wooden, but the world didn’t feel quite so spinny anymore. “I gotta shower.”

  “You think it’s safe?” Funny how the anxious red-headed kid still stared out of the now adult-sized face.

  “You mean am I going to fall down, or am I going to try to kill myself again?” She could see from his face that was what he meant. “Look. I tried to kill myself.” She took a deep breath to calm herself and then punched his gut to get the dopey concern right off his face. “I thought I would never see anyone again. But here you are.”

  Lizzie continued forcing her voice to a softer tone. “I’m not going to do it again. Not now anyway. And besides, I don’t seem to be very good at it, right?”

  That got a hint of a smile from him. And that pissed her off. “So, leave me the hell alone so I can get this puke off me!”

  As soon as she found someone, all she wanted was to be alone again. What was wrong with her?

  He continued to appraise her. His look said he wasn’t going anywhere and she realized she needed to try a new tactic.

  “I’m hungry. Can you fix us something to eat?” She pulled off the vomit-covered shirt and stepped out of her sweats. The bathroom was cold and she felt goosebumps spread across her skin.