Flare (15 page)

/***/

They sat cross-legged in the living room, enjoying the soft glow of the LED lights against the cool grey stones in the wall. Courtney smiled at him without saying a word and he blushed in return, though his embarrassment was obscured by the faint shadows that now surrounded them. Ash eventually talked again and they spoke more of his love for Landini. They spoke of his other heroes too: Alexander Pope, Frida Kahlo, John Nash, Stephen Hawking, Ludwig Beethoven and Jean-Dominique Bauby.

“All those guys have some sort of disabilities,” said Courtney.

“Yeah,” said Ash. “Heather always said there was a connection.”

Courtney squinted her eyes.

“What connection?”

Ash wondered if she was just being polite, but her look was genuine. He took a deep breath, bit his lower lip and grimaced. He took his eyes off of Courtney and looked at the floor.
After all we’ve seen, after all we’ve been through,
I still find a way to be ashamed.

“My face, my body,” he said. “My scars.”

“Your … scars?”

Ash nodded.

“I guess you have some,” said Courtney. “But they’re not that noticeable.”

Ash nodded but still couldn’t look her in the eye.

“I’m not being cute, like I can see past them or something,” said Courtney. “Really, it’s not that big of a deal, and I’m surprised you even expected me to notice.”

Ash nodded again.

“I guess I’ve seen too much,” said Courtney. “After what we’ve all seen, a lightly scarred face is nothing nowadays.”

She’s right.
I can still see, my skin is still there, and I’m amongst the living. The circle of acceptance expands in times of stress, and I’m now within it beyond question.

“But I do understand,” said Courtney. “Even those great guys you talked about felt a little bad about who they were now and then. I mean, we’ve all got something we’re insecure about, even in these times.”

/***/

They spoke of his father, and the car accident that gave him the scars when he was young. About how his father had never forgiven himself for setting Ash back like that, and had then put it upon himself to make Ash exceptional in everything else.

“And you were a prodigy,” said Courtney. “That’s what your sister says.”

“I was,” said Ash. “My father recognized this, and pushed me even harder for it.”

“Yeah. Your sister said you had a PhD. You’re young to have one.”

“I have two,” he said.

“Two? You’re young … the numbers don’t …”

“My father pushed me,” said Ash.

/***/

The conversation drifted to his other accident, the one he’d had just before the flare. Ash told her that he had broken down after his second PhD and that he’d been doing a lot of drinking, which probably led to his accident. Courtney asked him why he had broken down.

“I did really well in some of the early parts of my life,” said Ash. “And then I ran out of things to do well on. I was supposed to just
do great things
, continue the momentum, but it wasn’t that easy.”

“What about your father, what did he say?”

“He passed away,” said Ash. “Two years before all this happened.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ash looked down in response.

“A parent’s death can stop anyone’s momentum,” said Courtney. “But there’s a pattern. Heather told me this second accident brought you to a hospital basement, and that saved you from the sun.”

“It was luck.”

“We’ve all had a bit of luck to survive this,” said Courtney. “But there’s a pattern. The first car crash allowed you to be reborn as a prodigy. The second crash allowed you to be reborn as …
something else
.”

Ash nodded as he considered this. He’d never thought about it like that, but he felt that she might be right.

/***/

The conversation went quiet and they sat in silence, fellow members of the now-exclusive
in-circle
of survivors.

Courtney was comfortable with the silence and sat calmly in the faint glow of the LED bulbs, her dark skin absorbing the light and reflecting none of it, a dainty silhouette in the darkness. Ash would barely have known she was there were it not for her outline and her smell, which was of soft citrus. Ash hadn’t yet used the compound’s shower and now wished that he had.

“I like this place,” she said, rescuing the conversation from silence. “I spent some time here. The warden invited all the guards, staff and especially volunteers like myself here for dinners. He was always kind to the volunteers.”

“He lived like a king out here,” said Ash.

“Yeah,” said Courtney. “They paid the guards well and they paid him
really
well, and the property’s cheap.”

“Societies often pay the price for certain tasks that no one else wants to do,” said Ash. “And if you take the job out here, they give you a castle.”

“He must have been in his office back at the prison when the flare hit, and if I remember, he had large windows,” said Courtney. “His castle here didn’t help him much.”

Ash nodded. Most syllogisms and hard-wrung truisms about life and society are thrown out when a big enough tragedy hits. When the sun sent fire like it did, the poor, the rich, the educated and ignorant were all equally burnt. All that mattered is where you were when the flare struck. There was no lesson to be learned, no payback to the greedy and no vindication of the good. This was a random event, fate picking up life’s cards and throwing them to the wind. Those that survived could only play whatever cards were left, however they may have fallen.

/***/

They talked into the day, up late while Heather slept in the other room. Ash was awkward around her, but she was forgiving, saving him by taking the end of all his hanging comments and turning them around until they became something meaningful.

They spoke of life before the flare, and life in general. She’d had a tough upbringing, one that she didn’t really want to discuss.

“I honestly don’t miss that many people from before all this,” she said.

Courtney spoke of the horrors she had seen as a captive, but she had a strength that kept her from being scarred by her experience. He asked how she could be so stoic in the face of such horror, and she responded by saying that he had probably seen a lot too, and he seemed well adjusted.

“But I wasn’t kept hostage,” said Ash. “Tell me how you can be so strong.”

“Let’s just say my upbringing helped me get through,” said Courtney. “It brought me to this place, and I’m here with you now, alive.”

“Yeah,” said Ash. “Tough childhoods can bring you to interesting places.”

“True,” said Courtney. “There’s always a price though. I was thinking that I’m not as crushed as I should be by the flare. I’m okay, but I shouldn’t be. I should feel a lot more.”

“Don’t you miss
anyone
?”

Courtney thought about this.

“My brother,” she said. “He died before the flare though.”

“Of what?”

“A congenital condition,” she said. “He couldn’t breathe, and it was painful towards the end. I miss him a lot, but I don’t miss much else.

“So many little things out of our control, and so many little decisions shape our whole lives,” said Courtney. “Where you were raised, who you decided to marry. But the flare wiped it clean, and now we’re back to zero. Doesn’t matter what you did in the past, if you cheated on your wife or what kind of family you were raised in, it’s all erased, and the only thing that matters anymore is if you can make it to the next day.”

Ash nodded.

“Still,” said Courtney. “I miss my brother, a lot. We were close.”

/***/

They spoke of survival, which Courtney knew well. Orienteering, camping, foraging, rock climbing, tracking animals and finding water—she could do it all.

“I studied
survival theory
,” said Ash. “I didn’t live it like you, but I studied it, what happens after big tragedies and small ones. Stranded lifeboats, earthquakes and wartime massacres ... that kind of thing.”

“What did you find?”

Ash explained he found that those who act and move generally have the best chance at survival.

“But I never studied anything like this flare,” added Ash. “This is different.”

“Yeah,” said Courtney. “I understand the
move
part, but the
act
part might not be right. A lot of the guys in the prison were all about action, and they were killed by the other women. I mean, it’s not that simple seeing everything from the eyes of what happened in prison, but—”

“There’s truth to what you say,” said Ash. 

Ash thought of Dr. Shaw, the man who had acted to save his life, and then acted again and died because of it.

“If action isn’t good, what do you think we should do instead?” asked Ash.

“Get better at
hiding
,” said Courtney. “My gut tells me that the best bet is to keep moving, and get really good at hiding. Being meek is okay, because they don’t give points anymore for being tough.”

Ash understood this and nodded in return.

“I see your scars now, and I like them,” said Courtney. “They make you look meek, but in a good way.”

Ash blushed, and Courtney then spoke of her own skin, flawless and always the darkest wherever she went, even when she had backpacked across Africa. She had all the Western ideals of feminine beauty, with small hips and a childlike face, but she had always been the darkest one around, always.

“I think I have some protection,” said Courtney. “I’m scared to test it because of what it might do to my eyesight, but I bet I could get away with something. Maybe a sunrise, maybe one day if there’s cloud cover.”

“It’s strong,” said Ash. “You’d need a
lot
of cloud cover.”

“Yeah,” said Courtney. “Probably need enough clouds to make another extinction event.”

“Yeah,” said Ash.

He wanted to warn her about how dangerous the flare was, how her melanistic skin was still skin … but she didn’t need a lecture. She’d survived this long, and she wasn’t a nut. She would be fine.

/***/

She asked Ash what he and Heather were after, and he told her of the Salvation. They were in too close to be holding secrets from each other, and they had nothing to lose by sharing their goal.

“I’ve heard of it,” said Courtney. “There were a lot of those sheets floating around, even in the prison. I got to work on one and couldn’t quite solve it, but I figured out enough to know that they revealed coordinates to somewhere. You taking me along?”

“Sure,” said Ash, knowing that Heather would agree. “Can’t say what we’ll find there.”

“Yeah,” said Courtney. “I can’t say either. But I’d love to come along. Sounds like an adventure.”

“Any chance your prisoners are following us?”

“None.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Girls like that don’t think of salvation,” said Courtney. “They look to dominate their own block, their own house and their own prison. Once they have that settled, they look to hold onto it and nothing more.”

/***/

Courtney had already taken a shower, so Ash took his while she prepared for bed. The water came out clean, but it smelled of sulfur and was viciously cold. Each touch of the water stopped his breath, and he had to lather himself outside of its stream, turning the faucet on only to rinse the soap from his body. It was a challenge, but he cleaned himself completely and came out of the shower relaxed.

Ash and Courtney fell asleep next to each other, close but not touching. Courtney had the mien of someone comfortable resting anywhere, be it outdoors or on someone’s floor, and she was the kind of girl who was very comfortable sleeping alone. She was delicate perhaps, but had a stoic face and strong presence that kept Ash at a distance. Besides, it wasn’t in his nature to physically approach a girl in the middle of the night, even when he was the last man left on earth.

He thought of her before he fell asleep, and his thoughts turned into dreams. He dreamt that she was able to walk in daylight, her skin now a thicker substance but still attractive. She was made of a plastic veneer, a black and shiny shell reflecting the daylight in all its power, seemingly impervious and enduring forever. She walked in the sun confidently, but her outer shell wasn’t quite her, and her features didn’t move. Her stoic face stayed unmoving, and Ash knew that Courtney’s real self was underneath the carapace, mortal and soft just like everyone else. The sun increased in intensity on her black shell until Ash awoke, not knowing if it had been hours or minutes since he had fallen asleep.

He looked at her and noted that she was still at rest, oblivious to his dream and most likely not dreaming of him. He closed his eyes shortly thereafter, feeling safe in their house, knowing that the sun couldn’t hurt them and that Heather would wake him if he overslept. Heather often woke before he did, even now that they slept during the day.