A Sister, a Song, a Somehow

The cavern is mostly quiet—there are a few other security guards on night shift. I duck under a heating pipe and make my way through stalactites and piles of sleeping bodies huddled for warmth. Past the sleeping chambers, a rushing sound echoes down a tunnel from the underwater river that keeps six hundred people alive.

I climb the stairs to the upper chamber. The roof is one huge skylight. Past the chicken houses and rabbit pens, the white rice paddies, and patches of bean bushes and corn stalks, and up the stairs is the door to the outside. Four-foot thick iron walls. Windows of unbreakable glass. One door. The sun is just rising over the cracked and jagged earth.

I hear a frantic thunk thunk thunk. It’s coming from a window. I turn around. There’s a girl, my age—in the outside. It must be her. She’s leaning against the window, pounding on the glass. Shaking. Smattered with blood and dust. No signs of contamination, though. Her eyes roll back and she falls.

I turn down the stairs and on to the rest of my patrol route. No one saw. But I know it won’t be long before someone notices those handprints.

Yesterday, I found a line

A sidewalk crack in time

The street sign says it’s over

The street sign says it’s over, hey hey

The day before I entered the cavern, masses crowded around the examination area, no one in body bags yet. Though the area was heavily guarded, I found their fault and slipped through. Then, I stood in front of a man with a record book, and watched him while he scribbled out “Female. 21. Uncontaminated.” Only two of them were true.

This cavern is the home of what we can only expect to be the last survivors of the human race. The cavern is called “Phoenix” in the name of hope. As if we could just pop our little heads out of the piles of rotting corpses and dust ourselves off in gleaming sunlight.

We all live on rations and wear threadbare clothes. When no one can see me, I rub vaseline on my lips, rinse my mouth with baking soda solution as many times as it takes to cover the smell of death inside me, and hide the dark purple spots swelling under my skin with makeup. Since I grew up on the streets and and I follow the rules of the cavern when it matters, the authorities deemed me most useful as a security guard. We guards were posted primarily to watch the outside world, or so they said. The cavern is secure enough; the authorities don’t fear the outside. They fear panic. Fancy how they use guns to control panic.

I’m glad, though, that I get to carry one of the guns.

Every day we looked out the windows and watched the world turn to wasteland. Sometimes, the contaminated come — the ones who’ve been infected for weeks — vomiting, skin bubbled up and black, blood trickling from their noses, their mouths, their eyes. Decaying from the inside out.

When I look back,

see humanity, strong as glass

Tell me has it died?

Tell me has it died? Hey hey

The virus is spread through bodily fluids. Sometimes it only takes three weeks before the host dies, already half-rotted. But not everything is affected. Some animals and a few species of plants are immune. With the human population fading out and plenty of corpses to feed on, they multiplied. They broke out of zoos, came down the mountains, rose up out of near extinction to rule the earth.

This haven, designed and built years ago by a doomsday prepper to protect his little family, is now filled to its breaking point. The authorities meet daily in the council chamber to figure out how to stretch the resources and keep us alive. They were careful in filling the cavern — the day of the examination, a good amount of blood was spilled keeping the contaminated out. They said it wasn’t brutal. It was mercy. It kept the contaminated from a long, painful death and not one diseased drop would enter their precious hideout, or so they thought.

I know something they don’t know. The virus isn’t infallible; if the host makes it past seven weeks, they’ll live.

About a week ago, a Thursday maybe, I was off-duty. Sitting against the cavern wall between the stairs and senate chamber. During a shift change, a swarm of people went up and down the stairs to the upper chamber.

“Mind if I join you?” It was a guy in a t-shirt soiled with dirt and water. He must have worked the crops.

“Sure.”

He sat next to me and brushed at a spot of dirt on his pants.

“How’s it up there?” I asked.

“Hot and humid.” He wiped his forehead with the meat of his thumb. “The corn isn’t doing too good. A lot of the seedlings are stunted. The boss says there’s not enough phosphorus in the soil.”

“Can you fix it?”

“We’ll sure try.”

I ran my fingers over the pistol at my hip. “What about the other crops?”

“They all have their own problems.”

I sighed. Then, something touched my shoulder. I jerked back, muscles rigid, fingers tight on the pistol. He’d touched me.

“Easy, there. I’m sorry,” he said, hands up.

I breathed. Our eyes met for a moment.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “We’ll make it.”

Will we, really? I thought. I’m glad someone’s so certain.

I found Head Officer Slade outside the senate chambers with another guard.

“Checking in,” I said.

“Carry on,” he said, but he didn’t look at me. There was something in his hands. A bracelet.

“Was that hers?” said the other guard.

He nodded. “She dropped it before she went to the examination. I was so sure I’d see her again. She wasn’t contaminated. She wasn’t-”

“You shouldn’t keep holding onto that,” the guard said.

“Shut up and go back to your post,” Slade said.

The guard hesitated, saluted, and walked down the tunnel.

At the end of my round I was alone in the storage chambers. I snagged another can of baking soda and a bag of dried rabbit meat. There was a crevice past the sleeping chambers where I could hide and eat.

I passed some workers on their way to the upper chamber. That farm worker was there, keeping his head down. We made eye contact, but he immediately looked away. I watched him closely, and it dawned on me that it had been exactly three days since I first saw him. He was at the bottom of the stairs when the light hit his skin just right. He was sweating.

I aimed for the soft spot above his ear, hoping he wouldn’t bleed too much. At the crack of my gun, the workers scattered from his body. I pretended to check for a pulse while I slipped the dried meat under his shirt.

“You. Report,” Officer Slade said from behind me.

I pulled the bag from under his shirt. “I caught this man stealing extra rations.”

“Very well. Carry on.”

I tore a strip from the hem of his shirt and wrapped it tight over the wound to keep the blood from spreading. Then dragged the body to the garbage disposal chamber. I pulled off his shirt. I’d been right. The beginning of a few purple spots around his heart. He would have known he was infected by this morning. And the idiot was still going to work with the crops as if the virus wouldn’t wipe out our food supply.

“Were you trying to kill us all?” I asked.

I don’t know what I missed. He’d only touched my shoulder. I took every precaution. I never ate without first thinking that I can’t let the virus spread — never changed my clothes, never took a step, hardly even breathed without considering all the ways I could leave infection behind. I never overlooked a bit of my blood, sweat, or saliva, never left a drop behind. I don’t know what I missed.

I threw the body in the incinerator and wiped up every speckle of blood with bleach-soaked rags.

I grew up with death. Blades flashing in the night, the last breath wasted in a scream.

Death walked past me moments before a bullet was buried in its brain, death filled its veins with too many shards, death slept on the other side of the street huddled in a door frame while cold soaked to its bones.

This is no different.

Now, I can hear Head Officer Slade’s shouts reach out the tunnels from the upper chamber. He’d seen the handprints and shouted that it must have been his sister, that they were just her size, and that surely someone remembers that she was clean. He was right. His sister had been uncontaminated. Everyone had been moved into the cavern and Slade couldn’t find her. The authorities said there was nothing that could be done.

The truth was, I stole her place here — switched our examination papers.

Another security guard who’s a friend of his, Rómeno I think his name is, showed him the handprints and fresh blood on the window. Below, shoe prints in the earth lead up to the base of the wall. There were other tracks too — unidentifiable — leading up to the same spot, then back out into the wasteland, and a long groove like something had been dragged away. Slade and Rómeno found three other willing friends and went to the authorities, who gave them permission to leave. But no supplies. They said they couldn’t afford it. So, the five went to the door and to the outside.

They cut the rations again. Can’t keep stealing food or they’ll notice. Can’t count the dark spots on my skin anymore. Ignore the growling in my gut, ignore the room when it spins, walk my rounds without tipping over.

Then, I unlace my shoes wide

Still haven’t found the upside

Please let it be over

Please let it be over, hey hey

I squeeze myself as far back into the crevice as I can, clutching a bottle. They keep all these bottles locked away, of course. But I was on a round, no one was looking, and I snatched one, a jug of ethanol, and hid it here.

I’m lucky I’m so small; it’s easy to hide here. I hold the jug in silence. No one’s walking by. I’ve got enough time before I’m supposed to check in for my next round, and they’ll realize I’m missing. I twist open the jug, vapors drift up. It smells like candied fruit. Haven’t tasted anything sweet in weeks. I let the vapors cloud my mind for a moment, let my mind look wherever it wanted.

I see a clear blue sky and pretend I can breath it. I see a cold, misty morning and pretend I can feel it biting my skin. I see my brother, eyes closed, laying on the floor of a school bus and pretend he could still hold me. But I can’t get past the ballpoint pen through his neck from that sixteen-year-old crackhead who tried to rape me. So instead, I see the bag of pear drops he stole for me when I was five. I remember he was sad, but I didn’t know why at the time. He picked me up and sat me in his lap, watching me chew and lick my fingers while he sang the words he always sang.

Hey, hey

Now, I feel my bones crack open

See, fragile as our vitality

But is a fragile thing worth holding?

Today, I lace up my bones tight

Step past the crack and traffic sign

I won’t believe it’s over

I scream that it’s not over, hey hey

Before I can bring the jug to my lips, I let my fingers go limp. The jug slips from my hands. Some ethanol spills down the cracks. I twist the lid back on the jug and creep out of the crevice.

They’re back. It’s hard to believe. I press up against the glass, straining to see their figures in the distance. Of course, not all of them have come back. Just Rómeno, the girl, and two of the friends. Not the brother.

I shout down the stairway, “They’re back! They’re back!”

Of course they know who. Stirring and shouting echo down the tunnels. I look out the window again. Rómeno carries the girl’s thin but still living form in his arms. The other two can hardly hold themselves up. Who knows what they fought to bring her back?

Three members of the authorities come up the stairs, their faces hard. Rómeno falls on his knees before the door still holding the sister. None of them have any signs of contamination. They and the authorities stare at each other for a long moment.

And the door stays closed.

Rómeno raises his fist, slams it on the window. “Open the door, if only to honor Slade.”

The three turn and walk down the stairs.

“We’re not infected. Let us in!”

I stand there, the melody playing in my head. My brother. Me. Them. Humanity. All slipping between the sidewalk crack.

For hours, the four of them scream, cry, bang on the door, echoing to every end of the cavern until finally, the setting sun forces them to find shelter. As their silhouettes disappear over the horizon, the first stars twinkle in the night sky, a beautiful tapestry spread over their casket.

And I know they’ll only be the first.

It’s been two months since we entered the cavern. The authorities outnumber the people now.

But today, yes today, I stand at the edge and step beyond because eventually even I learned there’s more to existence than continuing to exist.

I’ll remember the haven. But the air is breathable here. Such a waste.

Maybe I’ll see the day the ashes celebrate.