Life After Arrowhead

                We all remember the world that was. Things like Reagan, New Coke, Walkman, the Ayatollah: all legends. The stories are meaningless, but we hang onto them, clutching them in the cold whispering night. I can taste the mist even, through my duct-tape seals: it has a tangy, metallic flavor that’s vaguely artificial. Someday it will fill my lungs completely, and oh, what a relief that’ll be. Because then the fear will be done with.

                I was a little girl, back when it happened. I’ll never forget the blood, the panic: hunched behind glass, we waited. So much screaming. But that’s over, and I have a purpose now. I’m a runner, a courier between the pockets of humanity that huddle in sealed-off factories and rubberized basements, in the tops of skyscrapers where only the flying things can get you.

                My name is Lupita.

                There’s barely any uppers, in the grocery stores and pharmacies. Decades of scavenging have picked those places clean. Spiders with the faces of men live there now; they've webbed up the leftovers. Good luck getting through that silk; your hands will burn off, and then how will you play your vinyls? So I make my first run of the day without the bennies or caffeine or methamphetamine pounding through my skull, hammering at my heart. I run clean, without a buzz. Maybe it’s for the best: there’s less fear, like this. The anxiety comes from real things.

                My Hazmat suit is patched in a dozen places; it’s a kaleidoscope of color, but they don’t see color, so I’m okay. One of these days, the seals are going to break, and I'll be dinner. I often wonder what’ll get me: whom among the scuttlers and flyers and pre-Cambrian rippers of flesh will do the honors. Some of them have acid venom; others just tear you limb from limb. I’d prefer to get stepped on by a Big One, if I’m honest, or  just fall in a sinkhole. Those deaths are quick, simple. Maybe even fun, if you’re zonked out on blues or reds.

                I wake up in the elementary school. Walls etched with chalk, kerosene lamp glowing. It’s a sturdy place, a leftover of brutalism that’s survived into the aughts, although its students haven’t. They’re still there, mummified little bodies webbed up in classrooms or scattered in the halls. I live in the maintenance shed, attached to the main building by one flimsy door. I open this door and pass by the bodies, like I do every day. I’ve never dreamed of cleaned them up. They’re my friends, Gap Tooth and No Face and Stripped Skin. Besides, moving them would risk attracting attention, releasing old scents that make my neighbors anxious. Excited.

                I sprint down the hall, the mist oozing over the visor of my suit. It’s thinner in here—thinny, you might say. I have a machete today, and that’ll do. Ran out of bullets years ago.

                God, I’m hungry.

                It’s like a dream, hammering down these old tiles and into the street, past the yellow buses with their flat decaying tires and rictus skeins of old mucus. The sky is gone, hidden in gray. The fog coats everything, turning objects into specters that hang half-hidden and lurch from the white as I approach.

It’s quiet. Particles of something unpleasant float, bouncing off the thin plastic of my suit’s visor. Spores, maybe, or a new breed of killer unleashed by Arrowhead. Evolution works fast, on the other side: things come through that were bred in weeks, days, to become perfect killers. Heard a guy say once he’d seen the portal, and it’s nothing but darkness over there, deep todash. I wouldn’t mind that.

                At least in the darkness, you can’t see what’s eating you alive.

                A big scuttler goes by, not fifteen feet away. I freeze; the little ones are blind, but the big ones are clever, smarter than the ‘average bear,’ if you kennit. This one's pretty dumb; its feelers play over my suit, and it gives me a nudge with its pincers, just to see if I’ll run. If I’ll turn out to be food.

                I hold perfectly still, as its sucker-mouthed tongue plays over my arm.

                Eventually it gets bored and skitters off. These things have quick metabolisms; it needs to find food quickly, or starve. I wait till it’s a shadow on Green Street, before I start running. My sealed boots go thwap-thwap, thwap-thwap against ancient, cracked concrete.

                My first stop is Wordboy’s house, by the pond. He picked out a nice place, an old mansion type of deal. Lanterns in the drive, lots of windows. He replaced the glass with sheet-metal and the door with a long airlock tunnel, made of duct-taped steel. Must’ve taken him ages to build it, but he’s a smart one. Taught me all my words.

                Wordboy’s in a talking mood. Once he scrubs me off, he invites me inside. I strip off the suit and lie nude on his moth-eaten couch. He doesn’t mind; Wordboy’s gay as lord. No boob has ever turned his gaze. I tell him the bodies are still where they lie, at the school.

                “Good,” he says. “Keep the bastards off your scent. How’s the shed?”

                I tell him it’s fine, though the latrine could use some work. He nods; plumbing is an issue when you can’t churn up earth without attracting hungry mouths. He’s had similar problems, and candles flicker in every corner of his home, masking his scent. One day, I think, this whole place will burn down.

                “Wordboy,” I say, and I ask him—it’s become sort of a joke, you see—I ask him this every time. “Wordboy, when’s it gonna end? When’s the mist going away?”

                He laughs. “When the army comes back, and television comes on, and Project Star Wars is back on the budget.” He’s stooped and his teeth are rotted from eating processed junk to survive, but when he smiles I still see the old professor in him. He waves his empty rifle at the chalkboard in the corner. “Been tracking their migration patterns—south, like always. But slower.”

                I nod. It makes logic. Whatever’s coming through Arrowhead wants to fill the whole world—stuff it to the brim, with teeth and claws and greedy mouths. It hasn’t done that yet, but if the migration’s slow, it must be close. “You think when the mist is everywhere, maybe they’ll move on?”

                He shakes his head. “Never. This ecosystem is too perfect—everything eats everything else on their world, but ours... ours is a free buffet. All you can eat, forever.”

                I throw up my hands. “Wordboy, you don’t give me hope, sai.”

                “I know.” He taps the stock of his Remington. “But we’ll rebuild. We’re a stubborn breed. That’s why I have my books, ken? Someday we’ll build a way to stop them.”

                His arrogance is immense. I roll my eyes. “Sure, sure. And someday I won’t shit in a bucket.”

                “I’m telling you. Things will change.” The worst part is, he really means it. Smart types think they have it all figured out; me, I think with my legs. It’s the only thinking worth doing, when a thousand grasping arms are reaching for your meat. “Someday, Lupe, we’ll fix it. Until then…” And he presents me with a miracle. An unwrapped, still-fresh Twinkie, virginal and yellow in its translucent shell. “Here. For the Hodgson books you brought me.”

                I take it. “Is this… real?”

                “As real as anything from the dead past.” He shrugs. “Tastes better than hydroponic carrots, at least. Try.”

                I do. My body is starved for carbs. I want to save the treasure for later, but I can’t help it: my fingers rip open the wrapper. “It’s beautiful.”

                He laughs. “I’m sure the manufacturers would appreciate your review.”

                My first bite is heavenly: stale, yes, stale as dead skin. But so fluffy, and sugary, and light on my mouth! Melting, on my tongue! My eyes roll, and this time it’s from pleasure. Once my Twinkie-gasm is over, and I lick my fingers clean, I stand. “Can’t stay. Lot of runs before dusk.”

                “I can dig it.” He hugs me, and I hug him back. We aren’t family, or even close friends, but we both understand this need, the need for mutual human contact that’s been lost in the face of the forever-darkness. The sunless earth. “I wish you’d come and stay here.”

                I shake my head. In my stomach, the Twinkie churns nauseously, unrecognized by digestive enzymes. “No. I need to be alone. They smell you, if you gather. That’s how they got Brighton.”

                He sighs. “If we don’t gather, we’re just going to go extinct. Matter of time.”

                I don’t care. I don’t like people. They scare me, because at least with Big Ones and the scuttlers, you know what you’re getting. But faces are hard to understand, and caring is harder. Better to be alone, and safe, with my Atari and my corpses. “I know,” I tell him. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

                He nods. “Well. If you change your mind… I’m here.”

                “Yes.”

                I put on my suit, I pass through the airlock with its mist of ethanol-bleach. My boots hit the pavement and I am running, running, past the lumbering legs of something ten times my size that sweeps the ground with a clawed tentacle. I run past a man-faced spider, fighting with its fellows over the last scraps of a dog’s bones. My feet pound the roads, my face stares blank and gauzy from the fogged-up visor.

                Someday, I think, breathing hard. There’s Twinkie on my breath.

                Someday.